Punch (42.1862)

Mat 17, 1862.

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI,

301

in exchange for a friend’s violoncello; and “ zo losing,” said the musician,
who is Israelite as well as Immortal, “by de bargain.”

I was delighted to see the cordial way in which Leys, the great
master of the Belgian school, (whose invitation to the dinner was hut a
poor and partial return, Sin Charles assured him, for the profuse
honour and hospitality extended to the members of our own Academy
who last year visited the great picture exhibition at Antwerp,) was
welcomed by Millais, Egg and Elmore, Ward, and a host of our
historical painters, and what hearty cheery handshakings (which might
have been longer) passed between M. Tidemand, the honest but
profoundly earnest and tender painter of those scenes of common Norse
life, which are the chief ornaments of the Scandinavian Gallery at the
International Exhibition, and our own Webster, Faed, Frith, Hook,
and others. Nor was it less pleasant to see the kindly greetings ex-
changed between the ioreign critics and men of letters—Theophile
Gautier, Charles Blanc, Louis Yiardot, John Lemolne, Carl
Hartmann, and others of their confreres only less distinguished,
charged to pass in review the noble collection of the pictures of all
schools and races now open at South Kensington—their hosts of the
Academy, and their English brother authors and men of letters, who
filled so large a place at the Academy’s hospitable board. “ This is
indeed,” I said to myself, “ the visible acknowledgment of the brother-
hood which links the various Arts among themselves, and Artists of all
countries with each other. Happy the country that boasts an Academy
so prompt to open its doors to foreign merit, and ?o ready to express
by the honour it pays to intelligence and distinction at home in the
sister Arts of Painting and Literature, its thorough comprehension of
the tie that holds them all altogether !

“Had we been the nation of shopkeepers that foreign sarcasm rejoices
to prove us, should we see these tables thus surrounded ? It is well!
that wealth at length united with culture (tardy though the union
may have been) should be represented, as I see it here, by these worthy,
hard-headed, north country and Birmingham manufacturers, who have
replaced the aristocracy as patrons of the Arts, and in whom the Artist
finds far more liberal as well as punctual paymasters, than ever he did
in the few Lords who have condescended to give a modem picture a
place upon their walls ! It is well that the hard-headed, hara-handed,
working Genius of our nation should meet, in the persons of these our
modern, if less magnificent, Medici of Leeds and Manchester, of Bir-
mingham and Liverpool, with the Ministers and Statesmen, who owe
their invitations to this table less to their rank and titles, than to their
public services, and their well-won distinctions.

“ Here, at one English public dinner, at least, the snobbishness of
John Bull succumbs to the liberalising influence of the Fine Arts.
Here, the power of brain, asserts its right to its own place, not lower
than that assigned to official distinction, or the proudest titular rank.
Here, instead of the Muse of Literature being thrust into the back
ground, she is enthroned by the side of her sister Muses, Painting,
Sculpture, and Architecture, and bears her pen sceptre at an equal
height with those of the pencil, the modelling tool, and the portc-crayon.
Instead of limping lamely in to acknowledge herself at the tail of
a string of threadbare toasts—the Army and the Navy, the dignitaries of
the State, and the dignitaries of the Church, the Lord Mayor and the
Aldermen, our Yisitors, and our noble selves, the Stewards and the
Ladies, Letters are honoured only after the Sovereign, and the
Sovereign’s Servants, her Ministers”. . . I was going on, when I
was interrupted by a burst of laughter—the expression of my own half-
conscious amusement (as one lobe of the brain will comment on tbe
other) at the contrast presented, in obedience to the laws of association,
by the reality and the fancies of my dreams.

"The newspaper reports of the Academy dinner lay before me, with
its small list of distinguished Statesmen, its long bead-roll of Titled
Nobodies who never bought a picture or gave a commission to a painter;
its absence of every one of the distinguished artists rare chance
| assembled in London ; its ignoring of foreign letters, and its scanty recog-
nition of the respect due to native literature; its utter passing by of
i, the claims of the sister Arts—Music and the Drama; the fulsome
fulness of its laudations of all who can influence its fortunes by favour;
its sycophancy of rank and title and outward influence, and that in the
| |ace of a series of cool contemptuous disclaimers of all knowledge or
interest in Art by the men before whom in succession the Academic
, speaker knocked his forehead on the ground; and lastly, as if to sum
up in one unmeaning act the stupid snobbishness that marks the whole
| of this Academic entertainment; the toast of “Literature and its
| prospects and influences on Art,” relegated to the very end of the
feast, when every other institution which it can enter into the heart of
a respectful and awe-stricken Academician to bow down to has been
honoured, and when the lordly guests whom the bad dinner has dis-
agreed with, or the President’s eloquence has bored, have left the
spaces at the tables, lately filled by their august heads, vacant!

Ah! if Mr. Punch could only stoop to attend an Academy dinner, and
if the President would only ask him to propose that toast in that com-
pany and in that place, the Academy walls should hear for once what
they.seldom hear, except when the members are privately and confi-
dentially expressing their opinions of each other—a bit of truth !

PUNCHII, CRACEM PACEM PETENTIS PALINODIA.

Of late Punch did arraign,

In a contemptuous strain,

The sheds and domes that Fowke has dared to rear;

Nor for this doth Punch repent,

Since all he said he meant,

And bad architect may be good engineer.

But the same immortal lines
That poked fun at Fowke’s designs,

On Crack’s colour passed a scornful sentence,

Which fairer observation
Leads that teacher of tbe nation,

To recant upon more adequate acquaintance.

Only blameworthy is Crace,

That on Fowke he put a face,

And gave colour to his bald array of girders ;

For thus aiding and abetting,

The structure by its setting,

He shares the guilt of Fowke’s cruel murders.

Fowke, who quashed Invention’s not.e,

Cut fair Proportion’s throat,

Smothered Symmetry beneath two bi°; bell-glasses,

Starved poor Beauty in his sheds,

(Frames for huge cucumber-beds,)

And tied Taste to the tails of four wild asses !

Had Crace but made dull duller,

To the building squared the colour,

Murdered Muses he’d avenged, and slaughtered Graces ;
Whereas now by artful tinting,

He beguiles eyes into hinting
Thoughts of beauty, where it clearly out of place is.

For that I should have thrashed him,

For that I should have lashed him.

For not sinking to the depth of the occasion,

Crowning structure sad and stingy,

With colour drab and dingy—

And for “ dec ” giving de-dee-oration.

So Punch begs hereby to cancel
What he said of Crace’s stencil,

And owns he’s been fairly ta’en to task for it;

But reserves leave, pace Grace,

To regret Fowke’s ugly face
Should in Crace's cunning colour find a mask for it.

A Small Joke made at the Opening of the Great Exhibition.

Asked the wife of a Provincial Mayor, of a stingy disposition, as she
clad him in his fur-fringed robes upon the morning of May-Day, before
he went to Court—that is, to the Procession Court—“Tell me, Tim-
mins, if thou can’st, why dost thou resemble the ‘ beloved star’ named
in that pretty nigger song thou gavest me last week? Nay, dearest,
don’t look dummy ! ’Tis because ‘thou art so near, and yet so fur /’ ”

A CAUTION TO THE ROYAL COMMISSIONERS.

Let them clear out the Nave as soon as possible if they value their
receipts. The International Exhibition Building is not the first over-
grown body that has sunk rapidly under a-trophy.

Vol. 42.