The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 2, Harry Furniss [affordable ebook reader txt] 📗
- Author: Harry Furniss
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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[Pg 232] 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.
EARLY VICTORIAN ART. YOUNG LADY'S PORTRAIT OF HER BROTHER.
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,[Pg 233] 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 £18,000. 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,
"——."
[Pg 234]
WAITING.
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.[Pg 235]
CHAPTER XIII. THE CONFESSIONS OF A DINER.My First City Dinner—A Minnow against the Stream—Those Table Plans—Chaos—The City Alderman, Past and Present—Whistler's Lollipops—Odd Volumes—Exchanging Names—Ye Red Lyon Clubbe—The Pointed Beards—Baltimore Oysters—The Sound Money Dinner—To Meet General Boulanger—A Lunch at Washington—No Speeches.
The Thirteen Club—What it was—How it was Boomed—Gruesome Details—Squint-Eyed Waiters—Superstitious Absentees—My Reasons for being Present—'Arry of Punch—The Lost "Vocal" Chords—The Undergraduate and the Undertaker—Model Speeches—Albert Smith An Atlantic Contradiction—The White Horse—The White Feather—Exit 13.
ROBABLY no meal varies so much in the time of its celebration as that most important one, dinner. Some people still exist who dine at one o'clock; some also there are who daily observe that fearsome feast yclept "High Tea." The majority of people dine at various times ranging between seven o'clock and half-past eight, but there is one individual alone who dines at six. It is the City Guilder. Time was when City princes dwelt in City palaces, and rose at five, breakfasted at seven, lunched at twelve, dined at five and retired to rest at ten; but nowadays these magnates are lords of the City from ten till four, and of the West End and the suburbs for the remainder of the twenty-four hours, and they would in the ordinary course of things invite you to dinner[Pg 236] at eight o'clock or so. What inscrutable law, then, compels them to hold their state dinners at the dread hour of six?
For it is at this time, when the ebb-tide of humanity sets strongest from the City, that the honoured guest of a City Company may be seen fighting his way, like a minnow against stream, in a hansom to his dinner at the hall of the Guild. Still, he goes "where glory waits him," so what recks he that the hour is altogether uncongenial and inconvenient?
Nevertheless, I know as a matter of fact that this earliness compels many invited guests to decline the honour and pleasure of dining with a "Gill" (as "Robert" would say), who would without doubt accept the invitation were the hours of the Guild as reasonable as their cuisine is excellent.
Personally, however, it has often been a pleasure to me to leave my easel at four o'clock and prepare to meet my practical City patrons "on their own midden" at "5.30 for 6."
As an illustration I will record a reminiscence of a very pleasant evening I once spent in the City, when the festivities—save for my having to make a speech—went off with that success which is inseparable from City dinners.
Imprimis, I arrive in daylight and evening dress. These two, like someone and holy water, don't agree, for not all the waters of Geneva nor the arts of the queen of all blanchisseuses can destroy the horrid contrast between a white tie and a white shirt; yet another good argument in favour of a reasonable dinner hour.
I hate being in a minority. More especially do I detest being in such a decidedly pronounced minority as one joins when one drives into the City about six o'clock in the evening against a vast current of toilers of commerce homeward bound. It may be weak, but I feel it all the same. I seem to divine the thoughts of the omnibus driver as he gazes down upon me from his exalted perch—he does not think my shirt is clean. His sixteen "outsides" bestow upon me a supercilious look that conveys to me that they opine I am merely cabbing it to the station en route for a "suburban hop." But I bear up under it all, and think of the magnificent banquet of which they, poor[Pg 237] things, know nothing, and I am beginning to feel quite proud when a brute of a fellow in charge of a van catches his wheel in that of my cab and nearly pitches me out. I hurriedly decide to decline the next invitation I receive for a City dinner.
MENU OF THE DINNER GIVEN TO ME BY THE LOTOS CLUB, NEW YORK.
[Pg 238]
However, I live to reach Cannon Street and the mansion of the "Gill."
I am soon ushered into the Cedar Room, where I am received by the Master and the Wardens in their robes.
I mingle with the Guilders and their guests, and find the members of the Worshipful Company informing their friends that they are now in the Cedar Room; then they sniff, and the guests sniff and say "Charming!" Then they remark, "What a lot of pencils it would
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