Punch (52.1867)

May 18, 1867.]

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

199

TRUTH AT THE ACADEMY DINNER.

UDE people attack the Academy Dinner—declare it is a wrong
expenditure of the Academy funds, a tribute to flunkeyism,
and an occasion for snobbishness, an example of the worst
features of public dinnerism, in a case where those features
should find no countenance, with the Arts for hosts, and the
Eminences and Celebrities for guests.

But _ the fact is, the thing is misunderstood, owing to a
shameful mystification preached by the press. Reporters are not
now admitted. In order to conceal their humiliation at the
exclusion, the morning papers have connived at the publication
of a mock report of the speeches at the dinner, founded on
the sort of thing that used to be said there; but is now, happily,
and thanks to the influences which have brought about both
Parliamentary and Academic Reform, out of date.

The fact is, that dry fact and candid experience are now the
standing dishes of the Academic dessert; that the toasts of the
day are drunk, not in more or less questionable vintages, but in
the tonic waters from the well of truth, decanters of which, with
“bitter cups” for quaffing it from, are placed on the tables as
soon as the cloth is removed, and the Academicians and their
guests are left to their own reflections in the Academic
mahogany, which is polished, for these occasions, as bright as
a mirror, expressly that hosts and visitors may see themselves
as t hey are.

We have been requested by the Council—naturally indignant
at the fictitious report in the morning journals, which puts into
the mouths of those who proposed and those who responded to
the toasts of the day, exactly the same fulsome and unmeaning
rigmarole of compliments and congratulations which used to
go down in times of less sincerity and straightforwardness—to
publish a sample, at least, of what was actually said by some of
the speakers at the last dinner.

The President, in proposing the Guests of the Day, remarked,
that a good deal used once to be said on these occasions of ali
that the Art owed to the patronage of the nobility, and the
enlightened protection and interest of the Legislature. This
was all rot, of course, and they all knew it to be rot. The
nobility, if they had ever been the artists’best customers, had
long forfeited that character. Indeed, he doubted if they had
ever done much in the way of patronising native Art—con-
temporary Art, at all events. But, so long as the painters had
trusted to the Swells—he was a bit of a Swell himself, so he
hoped his language would not be considered
offensive or unbecoming—they had had a deuced
bad. time of it—had, in fact, hardly been able to
keep body and soul together. He excepted the
portrait-painters; they had no doubt owed a
great deal to the nobility—or rather the nobility
had owed a great deal to them. They had
painted their family pictures, and had not always
got paid, for them as punctually as might be. He
understood Reynolds had a heavy balance due
to him when he died; and he hoped this would
be a warning to Sir Joshua’s successors in the
President’s chair—he assumed they would, as
a rule, be portrait-painters—always to insist on
the rule of half payment before the first silting.

But, except in the way of having their por-
traits painted, it was certain that, now-a-days,
at all events, it was not the Nobs who were the
painters’ best patrons. They had to look to the
dealers first, and there were no patrons like
them, and he was sorry not to see some of them
at that table ; and then to the rich manufacturers
and merchants—the, men who made money and spent it, and who considered pictures the correct thing. Whether they knew or cared about
em much was another question. So that their Lordships and the other Swells invited to this dinner must not suppose they were asked in the
character of patrons. And it they didn’t do much in the way of buying pictures, he was alraid they did about as little in the way ot
knowing or caring about ’em. He lived with the class he was describing, and knew all about it. There was hardly one ot them could
trust himself to an opinion about a picture ; and if he did take a shot at that kind of game, ten to one it was a miss. No. The Swells were
ihere ‘because it was creditable to the Academy to have them there; it put the R.A’s. on a sort of level, for the moment, with thepiig-wigs
they were allowed to ask, and that was a great thing for a good many of the members who, unlike himself, were not born ^into that
class ol society. Besides it kept up the prestige of the Academy out-of-doors, and that had a direct effect on their market. The Snoos bought
because they fancied the Nobs understood and admired: so that it was a very short-sighted view to take—and he had known such.a view
taken within as well as outside the Academy, he was sorry to say,—that the money spent on the dinner was improperly withdrawn from the
cause of the Arts. It helped to keep up the credit of the Academy, to give them a tone in society; it afforded them a point of contact
with the ‘ upper ten,” which in this country always pays in the long run. In point of fact he’d be bound to say there wasn’t any £300
spent by the Academy in its schools, or its prizes, or any common-place expenditure of that kind, which brought them in as much money
as the £300 spent on that dinner.

Lord Derby, in returning thanks for Her Majesty’s Ministers, observed that he believed it was quite true, as the President had
said, that public men in this cpuntry didn’t know much about Art; but one thing at least he knew about it—it was a confounded nuisance
whenever it turned up in Parliament. There were a few fellows—Elcho and Rope, and Bentincic and Layard, and Gregory and
Darby Seymour—who thought they knew something about it, and who always made a row when there was any question about spending

C. idccJ'