Masques & Phases Part 10

How he managed to attract the notice of any but the Lunacy Commissioners I cannot conceive. Valued critic, admired artist, model keeper, I only hope he will attract no further attention.

Since it is clear that the law a.s.sists in blackening reputations even in the grave, I claim that other Miss Brownes who take advantage of life, and time by the forelock to put up monuments in the sufficiently hideous thoroughfares should be p.r.o.nounced _non compos mentis_. The perpetrators of the erection in High Street, Kensington, hard by St. Mary Abbots, may serve as an example. Inconvenient, vulgar, inapposite, this should debar even the subscribers from obtaining probate for their wills. I invoke posthumous revenge, and claim that at least 500_l_. damages should be paid as compensation to the nearest hospital for the _indignant_ blind, as my friend Mr. Vincent O'Sullivan calls them in one of his delightful stories.

(1906.)

NON ANGELI SED ANGLI.

I wish that the Rokeby Velasquez now firmly secured for the British nation could have been allowed to remain in Bond Street for a short while; not to tantalise the foreign countries who so eagerly competed for its acquisition, nor to emphasise the patriotism of its former owners, but as a contrast to 'Some Examples of the Independent Art of To-day,'

held at Messrs. Agnew's. Perhaps not as a contrast even, but as a complement. I do not mean to place all the examples on the same level with the 'Venus,' though with some I should have preferred to live; yet the juxtaposition would have a.s.serted the tradition of the younger painters and the modernity of the older master. 'We are all going to--Agnew's, and Velasquez will be of the company,' or something like Gainsborough's dying words would have occurred sooner or later. I am persuaded that we look at the ancient pictures with frosted magnifying- gla.s.ses, and stare at the younger men from the wrong end of the binoculars. It was ever thus; it always will be so. Most of us suspect our contemporaries or juniors. And they--_les jeunes feroces_--are impatient of their immediate predecessors. _Nos peres out toujours tort_. Though grandpapa is sometimes quite picturesque; his waistcoat and old b.u.t.tons suit us very well. 'Your Raphael is not even divine,'

said Velasquez when he left Rome and that wonderful _p.p.c_. card on the Doria. 'Your Academicians are not even academic,' some of the younger painters and their champions are saying to-day.

I found, moreover, the epithet 'independent,' to qualify an entertaining and significant exhibition, misleading. For many of the items could only be so cla.s.sified in the sense that they were independent of Messrs. Agnew and the Royal Academy. Mr. Tonks and Professor Brown are official instructors at the Slade School in London; Mr. C. J. Holmes is Keeper of the National Portrait Gallery. Mr. Gerard Chowne was a professor at Liverpool. Mr. Fry is now an official at New York; and the majority of the painters belonged to two distinctive and _dependent_ groups--the Glasgow School and the New English Art Club. Intense individualism is not incompatible with militant collectivism. The only independent artists, if you except Mr. Nicholson, were Mr. C. H. Shannon and Mr.

Charles Ricketts, who have always stood apart, being neither for the Royal Academy nor its enemies; their choice is in their pictures.

I feel it difficult to write of painters for some of whom I acted showman so long at the Carfax Gallery. I confess that when I heard they were going to Bond Street my pangs were akin to those of the owner of a small country circus on learning that his troupe of performing dogs had been engaged by Mr. Imre Kiralfy or the Hippodrome. A quondam dealer in ultramontanes, I became an Oth.e.l.lo of the trade. And in their grander quarters (I grieve to say) they looked better than ever, though I would have chosen another background, something less expensive and more severe.

Yes, they all went through their hoops gracefully. With one exception, I never saw finer Wilson Steers; the 'Sunset' might well be hung beside the new Turners, when the gulf between ancient and modern art would be almost imperceptible. The 'Aliens' of Mr. Rothenstein in the cosmopolitan society of a public picture gallery would hardly appear foreigners, because they belong to a country where the inhabitants are racy of every one else's soil. When time has given an added dignity (if that were possible) to this work, I can realise how our descendants will laugh at our lachrymose observations on the decadence of art. The background against which the stately Hebrew figures are silhouetted is in itself a liberal education for the aged and those who ask their friends what these modern fellows mean.

When the inhabitants of the unceltiferous portion of these islands employ the adjective _un-English_ you may be sure there is something serious on the carpet. It is valedictory, expressive of sorrow and contempt rather than anger. All the other old favourites of vituperative must have missed fire before this almost sacred, disqualifying Podsnappianism is applied to the objectionable person, picture, book, behaviour, or movement. And when the epithet is brought into action, in nine cases out of ten it is aimed at some characteristic essentially, often blatantly, Anglo-Saxon. Throughout the nineteenth century all exponents of art and literature not conforming to Fleet Street ideals were voted un-English; Byron, Sh.e.l.ley, Keats, Swinburne, the Pre-Raphaelites, and, in course of good time, those artists who formed the New English Art Club. There was some ground for suspicion of foreign intrigue. They regarded Mr.

Whistler, an American, who flirted with French impressionism, as a pioneer. Some of their names suggest the magic Orient or the romantic scenery of the Rhine. But it is not extravagant to a.s.sert that if Mr.

Rothenstein had chosen to be born in France or Germany, instead of in Bradford, his art would have come to us in another form. In his strength and his weakness he is more English than the English. Art may have cosmopolitan relations (it is usually a hybrid), but it must take on the features of the country and people where it grows; or it may change them, or change the vision of the people of its adoption. Yet Ruth must not look too foreign in the alien corn, or her values will get wrong. When an English artist airs his foreign accent and his smattering of French pigment his work has no permanent significance. Even Professor Legros unconsciously a.s.similated British subjectivity: his Latin rein has been slackened; his experiments are often literary.

It is an error however to regard the exhibitions of the New English Art Club as a h.o.m.ogeneous movement, such as that of Barbizon and the Pre-Raphaelite--inspired by a single idea or similar group of ideas. The members have not even the cohesion of Glasgow or defunct Newlyn. The only thing they have in common, in common originally with Glasgow, was a distaste for the tenets and ideals of Burlington House. The serpent (or was it the animated rod?) of the Academy soon swallowed the sentimentalities of Newlyn, just as the International boa-constrictor made short work of Glasgow. And the forbidden fruit of an official Eden has tempted many members of the Club. Others have resigned from time to time, but with no ill result--to the Club. Now, the reason for this is that the members have no dependence on each other, except for the executive organization of Mr. Francis Bate. It may be doubted if in their heart of hearts they admire each other's works. They are intense individualists (personal friends, maybe, in private life) artistically speaking, on terms of cutting acquaintance at the Slade.

The mannerism of Professor Legros is still, of course, a common denominator for the older men, and the younger artists evince a familiarity with drawing unusual in England, due to the admirable training of Professor Brown and Mr. Henry Tonks. The Spartan Mr. Tonks may not be able to make geniuses, but he has the faculty of turning out efficient workmen. Whether they become members of the Club or drift into the haven of Burlington House, at all events they _can_ fly and wear their aureoles with propriety. A society, however, which contains such distinctive and a.s.sertive personalities as Mr. Wilson Steer, Mr. Henry Tonks, Mr. Augustus John, Mr. William Orpen, Mr. Von Glehn, Mr. MacColl, and Professor Holmes, cannot possess even such unity of purpose as inspired Mr. Holman Hunt and his a.s.sociates of the 'fifties. The New English Art Club is simply an admirably administered a.s.sociation whose members have rather less in common than is shared by the members of an ordinary political club. The exhibitions are for this reason intensely interesting. They cannot be waved aside like mobs, and no comprehensive epigram can do them even an injustice.

I never knew any painter worthy of the name who paid the smallest attention to what a critic says, even in conversation. He will retort; but he will not change his style or regulate his motives to suit a critic's palate. So may I now mention their faults? What painter is without fault? Their faults are shared by _nearly_ all of them; their virtues are their own. I see among them an absence of any _desire_ for beauty--for physical beauty. If the artists have fulfilled a mission in abolis.h.i.+ng 'the sweetly pretty Christmas supplement kind of work,' I think they dwell too long on the trivial and the ign.o.ble. They put a not very interesting domesticity into their frames. Rossetti, of course, wheeled about the marriage couch, but his was itself an interesting object of _virtu_. Modern art ceased to express the better aspirations and thoughts of the day when modern artists refused to become the servants of the commune, but a.s.serted themselves as a component part of an intellectual republic. That is why people only commission portraits, and prefer to buy old masters who antic.i.p.ate those better aspirations.

Burne-Jones, however, expressed in paint that longing to be out of the nineteenth century which was so widespread. Now we are well out of it, the rising generation does not esteem his works with the same enthusiasm as the elders. It reads Mr. Wells on the future, and looks into the convex mirror of Mr. Bernard Shaw; but it does not buy Dubedats to the extent that it ought to do. The members of the New English Art Club could, I think, preserve their aesthetic conscience and yet paint beautiful things and beautiful people. Mr. Steer has now given them a lead. I wonder what Mr. Winter's opinion would be? He is the best salesman in London.

Among dealers, the ancient firm of Messrs. P. & D. Colnaghi, of which Thackeray writes, is the _doyen_. That of Messrs. Agnew is the _douane_.

Here it is that the official seal must be set before modern paintings can pa.s.s onwards to the Midlands and the middle cla.s.ses. Well, I felicitate the august officials on removing a tariff of prejudice; I felicitate the young artists who, released from the bondage of the Egyptian Hall, can now enjoy the lighter air, the larger day, the pasturage and patronage of Palestine. I compliment the fearless collectors, such as Mr. C. K.

Butler, Mr. Herbert Trench, Mr. Daniel, His Honour Judge Evans, the Leylands and the Leathearts of a latter day, for ignoring contemporary ridicule and antic.i.p.ating the verdict, not of pa.s.sing fas.h.i.+on but of posterity. As the servant spoke well of his master while wearing his clothes which were far too big for him, let me congratulate the Chrysostom of critics, the Origen who has scourged our heresies, Mr. D.

S. MacColl; because the Greeks have entered Troy or the barbarians the senate-house. _Dissolve frigus ligna super foco large reponens_, and let us mix our metaphors. What was Mr. MacColl's Waterloo was a Canossa for Messrs. Agnew.

(1906.)

MR. HOLMAN HUNT AT THE LEICESTER GALLERIES.

An enterprising American syndicate was once formed for manufacturing Stilton cheeses on a large scale; like the pirated Cheddars from similar sources, enjoyed by members of most London clubs. Various farms celebrated for their Stiltons were visited, sums of money being offered for old family recipes. The simple peasants of the district willingly parted with copies of their heirlooms, for a consideration, to the different American agents, who, filled with joy, repaired to their London offices in order to compare notes, and fully persuaded that England was a greener country than ever Constable painted it. What was their mortification on discovering that all the recipes were entirely different; they could not be reconciled even by machinery. So it is with Pre-Raphaelitism; every critic believes that he knows the great secret, and can always quote from one of the brotherhood something in support of his view. At the beginning the brothers meekly accepted Ruskin's explanation of their existence; his, indeed, was a very convenient, though not entirely accurate, exposition of their collective view, if they can be said to have possessed one. How far Ruskin was out of sympathy with them, indiscreet memoirs have revealed. An artistic idea, or a group of ideas, must always be broken gently to the English people, because the acceptance of them necessitates the swallowing of words. When the golden ladders are let down from heaven by poets, artists, or critics even; or new spirits are hovering in the intellectual empyrean, the patriarch public snoring on its stone pillow wakes up; but he will not wrestle with the angel. He mistakes the ladders for scaffolding, or some temporary embarra.s.sment in the street traffic; he orders their instant removal; he writes angry letters to the papers and invokes the police.

After some time Ruskin's definition of Pre-Raphaelitism was generally accepted, and then the death of Rossetti produced other recipes for the Stilton cheese, Mr. Hall Caine being among the grocers. Whatever the correct definition may be, ungracious and ungrateful though it is to praise the dead at the expense of the living, it has to be recognised that among the remarkable group of painters in which even the minor men were little masters, the greatest artist of them all was Dante Gabriel Rossetti. 'By critic I mean finding fault,' says Sir William Richmond; so let us follow his advice, and avoid technical discussion along with the popular jargon of art criticism. 'After staying two or three hours in the always-delightful Leicester Galleries, let us walk home and think a little of what we have seen.' For the essence of beauty there is nothing of Mr. Holman Hunt's to compare with Rossetti's 'Beloved' or the 'Blue Bower;' and you could name twenty of the poet's water-colours which, for design, invention, devious symbolism, and religious impulse, surpa.s.s the finest of Mr. Hunt's most elaborate works. Even in the painter's own special field--the symbolised ill.u.s.tration of Holy Writ--he is overwhelmed by Millais with the superb 'Carpenter's Shop.' In Millais, it was well said by Mr. Charles Whibley, 'we were cheated out of a Rubens.' Millais was the strong man, the great oil-painter of the group, as Rossetti was the supreme artist. In Mr. Holman Hunt we lost another Archdeacon Farrar. Then, in the sublimation of uglitude, Madox- Brown, step-father of the Pre-Raphaelites (my information is derived from a P.R.B. aunt), was an infinitely greater conjurer. Look at the radiant painting of 'Was.h.i.+ng of the Feet' in the Tate Gallery; is there anything to equal that masterpiece from the brush of Mr. Holman Hunt? The 'Hireling Shepherd' comes nearest, but the preacher, following his own sheep, has strayed into alien corn, and on cliffs from which is ebbing a tide of nonconformist conscience. Like his own hireling shepherd, too, he has mistaken a phenomenon of nature for a sermon.

One of the great little pictures, 'Claudio and Isabella,' proves, however, that _once_ he determined to be a painter. In the 'Lady of Shalott' he showed himself a designer with unusual powers akin to those of William Blake. Still, examined at a distance or close at hand, among his canvases do we find a single piece of decoration or a picture in the ordinary sense of the word? My definition of a religious picture is a painted object in two dimensions destined or suitable for the decoration of an altar or other site in a church, or room devoted to religious purposes; if it fails to satisfy the required conditions, it fails as a work of art. Where is the work of this so-called religious painter which would satisfy the not exacting conditions of a nonconformist or Anglican place of wors.h.i.+p? You are not surprised to learn that Keble College mistook the 'Light of the World' for a patent fuel, or that the background of the 'Innocents' was painted in 'the Philistine plain.' Who could live even in cold weather with the 'Miracle of the Sacred Fire?'

Give me rather the 'Derby Day' of Mr. Frith--admirable and underrated master. What are they if we cannot place them in the category of pictures? They are pietistic e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns--tickled-up maxims in pigment of extraordinary durability--counsels of perfection in colour and conduct. Of all the Pre-Raphaelites, Mr. Hunt will remain the most popular. He is artistically the scapegoat of that great movement which gave a new impulse to English art, a scapegoat sent out to wander by the dead seas of popularity. I once knew a learned German who regretted that none of his countrymen could paint 'Alpine scenery' as Mr. Hunt has done in the 'Scapegoat'! Yes, he has a message for every one, for my German friend, for Sir William Richmond, and myself. He is a missing link between art and popularity. He symbolises the evangelical att.i.tude of those who would go to German Reed's and the Egyptian Hall, but would not attend a theatre. After all, it was a gracious att.i.tude, because it is that of mothers who aged more beautifully, I think, than the ladies of a later generation which admired Whistler or Burne-Jones and regularly attended the Lyceum. When modern art, the brilliant art of the 'sixties, was strictly excluded from English homes except in black and white magazines, engravings from the 'Finding of Christ in the Temple' and the 'Light of the World' were allowed to grace the parlour along with 'Bolton Abbey,' the 'Stag at Bay,' and 'Blucher meeting Wellington.' You see them now only in Pimlico and St. John's Wood. A friend of mine said he could never look at the picture of 'Blucher meeting Wellington' without blus.h.i.+ng. . . . Like a good knight and true, Sir William Richmond, another Bedivere, has brandished Excalibur in the form of a catalogue for Mr. Hunt's pictures. He offers the jewels for our inspection; they make a brave show; they are genuine; they are intrinsic, but you remember others of finer water, Bronzino-like portraits of Mr. Andrew Lang and Bismarck and many others. Now, you should never recollect anything during the enjoyment of a complete work of art.

Every one knows the view from Richmond, I should say _of_ Richmond; it is almost my own . . . Far off Sir Bedivere sees Lyonesse submerged; Camelot- at-Sea has capitulated after a second siege to stronger forces. The new Moonet is high in the heaven and a dim Turner-like haze has begun to obscure the landscape and soften the outlines. Under cover of the mist the hosts of Mordred MacColl, _en-Tate_ with victory, are hunting the steer in the New English Forest. Far off the enchanter Burne-Jones is sleeping quietly in Broceliande (I cannot bear to call it Rottingdean).

Hark, the hunt, (not the Holman Hunt) is up in Caledon (Glasgow); they have started the shy wilson steer: they have wound the hornel; the lords of the International, who love not Mordred overmuch, are galloping nearer and nearer. Sir Bedivere can see their insolent pencils waving black and white flags: and the game-keepers and beaters (critics) chant in low vulgar tones:

When we came out of Glasgow town There was really nothing at all to see Except Legros and Professor Brown, But _now_ there is Guthrie and Lavery.

Undaunted Sir Bedivere drags his burden to a hermitage near Coniston; but he finds it ruined; he bars the door in order to administer refreshment to the wounded Pre-Raphaelite; there is a knocking at the wicket-gate; is it the younger generation? No, he can hear the tread of the royal sargent-at-arms; his spurs and sword are clanking on the pavement. Sir Bedivere feels his palette parched; his tongue cleaves to the roof of St.

Paul's; but he is undaunted. 'We are surely betrayed if that is really Sargent,' he says. Through the broken tracery of the Italian Gothic window a breeze or draught comes softly and fans his strong academic arms; he feels a twinge. Some Merlin told him he would suffer from ricketts with shannon complications. Seizing Excalibur, he opens the door cautiously. 'Draw, caitiffs,' he cries; 'draw.' 'Perhaps they cannot draw; perhaps they are impressionists,' said a raven on the hill; and he flew away.

(1906.)

_To_ SIR WILLIAM BLAKE RICHMOND, R.A., K.C.B.

THE ECLECTIC AT LARGE.

In _The Education of an Artist_, Mr. Lewis Hind invented a new kind of art criticism--a pleasing blend of the Morelli narrative (minus the scientific method) and _Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour_. He contrives a young man, ignorant like the Russian, Lermoliev, who receives certain artistic impressions, faithfully recorded by Mr. Hind and visualised for the reader in a series of engaging half-tone ill.u.s.trations. The hero's name is itself suggestive--Claude Williamson Shaw. By the end of the book he is nearly as learned as Mr. Claude Phillips: he might edit a series of art-books with all the skill of Dr. Williamson, and his power of racy criticism rivals that of Mr. George Bernard Shaw. You can hardly escape the belief that these three immortals came from the north and south, gathered as unto strife, breathed upon his mouth and filled his body--with ideas: Mr. Hind supplying the life. But this is not so: the ideas are all Mr. Hind's and the G.o.dfathers only supplied the name. What a name it is to be sure! It recalls one of Ibsen's plays: 'Claude Williamson Shaw was a miner's son--a Cornish miner's son, as you know; or perhaps you didn't know. He was always wanting _plein-air_.' Some one ought to say that in the book, but I must say it instead. At all events, Mr. Hind nearly always refers to him by his three names, and every one must think of him in the same way, otherwise side issues will intrude themselves--thoughts of other things and people. 'O Captain Shaw, type of true love kept under,' is not inapposite, because Claude Williamson Shaw fell in love with a lady who in a tantalising manner became a religious in one of the strictest Orders, the rules of which were duly set forth in old three-volume novels; that is the only conventional incident in the book. C. W. S., although he trains for painting, is admitted by Mr. Hind to be quite a bad artist. Apart, therefore, from the admirable criticism which is the main feature of the book, it shows great courage on the part of the inventor, great sacrifice, to admit that C. W. S. _was_ a failure as an artist. Bad artists, however, are always nice people. I do not say that the reverse is true; indeed, I know many good and even great artists who are charming; but I never met a thoroughly inferior painter (without any promise of either a future or a past) who was not irresistible socially. This accounts for some of the elections at the Royal Academy, I believe, and for the pictures on the walls of your friends whose taste you know to be impeccable. There is more hearty recognition of bad art in England than the Tate Gallery gives us any idea of.

I know that the Chantrey Trustees were deprived of the only possible excuse for their purchases by the finding of Lord Lytton's Commission; but I, for one, shall always think of them as kindly men with a fellow- feeling for incompetence, who would have bought a work by Claude Williamson Shaw if the opportunity presented itself. I have sometimes tried to imagine what the pictures of _invented_ artists in fiction or drama were really like--I fear they were all dreadful performances. I used to imagine that Oswald Avling was a sort of Segantini, but something he says in the play convinced me that he was merely another Verboekhoven.

Then Thackeray's Ridley must have been a terrible Philistine--a sort of Sir John Gilbert. Poor Basil Hallward's death was no great loss to art, I surmise: his portrait of 'Dorian Grey, Esq.', from all accounts, resembled the miraculous picture exhibited in Bond Street a short while ago. I am not surprised that its owner, whose taste improved, I suspect, with advancing years, destroyed it in the ordinary course after reading something by Mr. D. S. MacColl. It is distinctly stated that Dorian read the _Sat.u.r.day Review_! Frenhofer, Hippolite Schimier, and Leon de Lora were probably chocolate-box painters of the regular second-empire type.

Theobald, we know from Mr. Henry James, was a man of ideas who could not carry out his intentions. It must have been an exquisite memory of Theobald's failures which made Pater, when he wished to contrive an imaginary artistic personality, take Watteau as being some one in whose achievements you can believe. No literary artist can persuade us into admiring pictures which never existed; though an artist can reconstruct from literature a picture which has perished we know, from the 'Calumny of Apelles' by Botticelli. It was, therefore, wise to make Claude Williamson Shaw a failure as a painter. In accordance with my rule he was an excellent fellow, nearly as charming as his author, and better company in a picture-gallery it would be difficult to find--and you cannot visit picture-galleries with every friend: you require a sympathetic personality. It is the Claude--the Claude Phillips in him which I like best: the Dr. Williamson I rather suspect. I mean that when he was at Messrs. Chepstow, the publishers, he must have mugged up some of the real Dr. Williamson's art publications. Whether in the Louvre, or National Gallery, or in Italian towns, he always goes for the right thing; sometimes you wish he would make a mistake. Bad artists, of course, are often excellent judges of old pictures and make excellent dealers, and I am not denying the instinct of C. W. S.; but I cannot think it all came so naturally as Mr. Hind would indicate.

The reason why Claude Williamson Shaw discovered 'that he would not find a true expression of his temperament' in painting readers of this ingenious book will discover for themselves. a.s.suming that he had any innate talent, I do not think he went about the right way to cultivate it. His friend Lund gave him the very worst advice; though we are the gainers. It is quite unnecessary to go out of England and gaze at a lot of pictures of entirely different schools in order to become a painter.

Gainsborough and our great Norwich artists evolved themselves without any foreign study. There was no National Gallery in their days. A second- rate Wynants and a doubtful Hobbema seem to have been enough to give them hints. It would be tedious to mention other examples. The fortunate meeting of Zuccarelli and Wilson at Venice is the only instance I know in which foreign travel benefited any English landscape painter. Foreign travel is all very well when the artist has grown up. Paris has been the tomb of many English art students. M. Bordeaux, who gave Mr. Hind's hero tips in the atelier, seems to have been as 'convincing' as the famous barrel of the same name. Far better will the English student be under Mr. Tonks at the Slade; or even at the Royal Academy, where, owing to the doctrine of contraries, out of sheer rebellion he may become an artist.

In Paris you learn perfect carpentry, but not art, unless you are a born artist; but in that case you will be one in spite of Paris, not because of it. But if C. W. Shaw had been a real painter he would have seen at Venice certain Tiepolos which seem to have escaped him, and in other parts of Italy certain Caravaggios. Yes, and Correggios and Guido Renis, too hastily pa.s.sed by. He was doomed to be a connoisseur.

(1906.)

EGO ET MAX MEUS.

'How very delightful Max's drawings are. For all their mad perspective and crude colour, they have, indeed, the sentiment of style, and they reveal with rarer delicacy than does any other record the spirit of Lloyd- George's day.' This sentence is not quite original: it is adapted from an eminent author because the words sum up so completely the inexpressible satisfaction following an inspection of Mr. Beerbohm's caricatures. To-day essentially belongs to the Minister who once presided at the Board of Trade. Several attempts indeed have been made to describe the literature, art and drama of the present as 'Edwardian,'

from a very proper and loyal spirit, to which I should be the last to object. We were even promised a few years ago a new style of furniture to inaugurate the reign--something to supplant that Louis Dix-neuvieme _decor_ which is merely a compromise with the past. But somehow the whole thing has fallen through; in this democratic aeon the adjective 'Edwardian' trips on the tongue; our real dramatists are all Socialists or Radicals; our poets and writers Anarchists. Our artists are the only conservatives of intellect. Our foreign policy alone can be called 'Edwardian,' so personal is it to the King. Everything else is a compromise; so our time must therefore be known--at least ten years of it--as the Lloyd-Georgian period. I can imagine collectors of the future struggling for an _alleged_ genuine work of art belonging to this brief renaissance, and the disappointment of the dealer on finding that it dated a year before the Budget, thereby reducing its value by some thousands.

Just as we go to Kneller and Lely for speaking portraits of the men who made their age, so I believe our descendants will turn to Max for listening likenesses of the present generation. Of all modern artists, he alone follows Hamlet's advice. If the mirror is a convex one, that is merely the accident of genius, and reflects the malady of the century.

Other artists have too much eye on the Uffizi and the National Gallery (the more modest of them only painting up to the Tate). In Max we have one who never harks forward to the future, and is therefore more characteristic, more Lloyd-Georgian than any of his peers. Set for one moment beside some Rubens' G.o.ddess a portrait by Mr. Sargent, and how would she be troubled by its beauty? Not in the slightest degree; because they are both similar but differing expressions of the same genius of painting. The centuries which separate them are historical conventions; and in Art, history does not count; aesthetically, time is of no consequence. But in the more objective art of caricature, history is of some import, and (as Mr. Beerbohm himself admitted about photographs) the man limned is of paramount importance. Actual resemblance, truthfulness of presentation, criticism of the model become legitimate subjects for consideration. Generally speaking, artists long since wisely resigned all attempts at catching a likeness, leaving to photography an inglorious victory. Mr. Beerbohm, realising this fact, seized caricature as a subst.i.tute--the consolation, it may be, for a lost or neglected talent. It is as though Watts (painter of the soul's prism, if ever there was one) had pushed away Ward and Downey from the camera, to insert a subtler lens, a more sensitive negative.

If, reader, you have ever been to a West-end picture shop, you will have suffered some annoyance on looking too attentively at any item in the exhibition, by the approach of an officious attendant, who presses you to purchase it. He begins by flattery; he felicitates you on your choice of the _best_ picture in the room--the one that has been 'universally admired by critics and collectors.'

The fact of its not being sold is due (he naively confesses) to its rather high price; several offers have been submitted, and if not sold at the catalogued amount the artist has promised to consider them; but it is very unlikely that the drawing will remain long without a red ticket, '_as people come back to town to-morrow_.' There is the stab, the stab in the back while you were drinking honey; the tragedy of Corfe Castle repeated. _People with_ a capital _P_ in picture-dealing circles does not mean what they call the _Hoypolloy_; it means the great ones of the earth, the _monde_, the Capulets and Montagues with wealth or rank. You have been measured by the revolting attendant. He does not count you with them, or you would not be in town to-day; something has escaped you in the _Morning Post_, some function to which you were not invited, or of which you knew nothing. If you happen to be a Capulet you feel mildly amused, and in order to correct the wrong impression and let the underling know your name and address you purchase the drawing; for the greatest have their weak side. But, if not, and you have simply risen from the 'purple of commerce,' you are determined not to lag behind stuck- up Society; you will revenge yourself for the thousand injuries of Fortunatus; you will deprive him of his prerogative to buy the _best_.

The purchase is concluded. You go home with your nerves slightly shaken from the gloved contest--you go home to face your wife and children, wearing a look of wistful inquiry on their irregular upturned faces, as when snow lies upon the ground, they scent Christmas, and you look up with surprise at the whiteness of the ceiling. Though in private life a contributor to the press, in public I used to be one of those importunate salesmen.