Punch: Punch (54.1868)

May 23, 1868.J

221

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.


I

SIR JOSHUA’S GHOST IN TRAFALGAR SQUARE.

mong the pictures ! Hushed the
strife

Of tongues, and feet that fall:
All silent, as the painted life
That hangs upon the wall.
Midnight’s last stroke had ceased
to thrill

And in each empty room,

Wall, roof and floor were vi-
brant still

With Big Ben’s hollow boom,
When into form from space
began

To gather and to grow,

The misty likeness of a man,

A man of stature low—

Of blunt, round face, yet bright
and bland,

Dark, square-cut velvet clothes,
With an ear-trumpet in his
hand,

A snuff-stain ’neath his nose.

From darkness into moonlight
round

From moonlight into dark,

He moved ; his footfall made no sound
Rad ears been there to mark.

“ ’Twas just a hundred years ago.

In Dalton’s rooms, Pall Mall,”—

Such were the words that, soft and slow,

Upon the silence fell;

And then a pinch, and then a sigh,

And trumpet clapped to ear,

As there had been more ghosts hard by
That he was fain to hear.

Face, gesture, form—all eyes had known,

Had eyes been there to see,

Sir Joshua’s spirit all alone
In the Academie—

A century of its life has flown,

He comes its state to see !

Dian obliged him with a light,

Her brightest, best. May-moon,

And canvasses stood clear to sight.

That well had spared the boon—

Now a huge pinch of snuff he took.

Then “pshawed” with right good-will.

And with impatient fillip shook
The Hardham from his frill—

Now wagged his head in dubious style ;

Now dropped a loud “ won’t do,”

Anon, with an approving smile,

His spectacles beamed through.

But when he had gone round one room,

And found more rooms to see,

His eyes for wonder seemed to loom,

Each eye as big as three—

“ If quality with quantity,”

He sighed, “had only grown !

Set what I’ve seen ’gainst what I see.

Which of them holds its own ?

Where’s the Grand Style, which my advice
On students used to charge ?

The general truth, the sacrifice
Of little things to large ?

Where’s the heroic, which I hoped
In abstract to express ?

The history, after which I groped,

Without historic dress?

Was I in error, or are those
That have so outward grown.

They seem to paint less men than clothes,

Of old times or their own ?

Was Gainseorough’s broadly rendered life
Of earth and sky and sea,

Or this, with square-inch study rife.

What landscape-art should be ?

Should history seek the largest traits
Of man and of event,

Or in the alleys and bye-ways
Of anecdote be spent ?

“All this I doubt, but-•” here he stayed.

And in complacent style
Stroked his round chin, while o’er him played
The moonbeam of a smile.

“ But in my own domain of Art
Masters like these—ahem !—

Can scarcely ask the world to start
Question ’twixt me and them.

If this is what for Portraiture
A hundred years have done,

Heaven help the men who must endure
Next century’s risks to run !

From me to West must be confest
What few advance can call,

But thence to Lawrence and to Sbee,

Sir Charles, Sir Frank, to fall!

Has Portrait risen, to life again
Since my hand bade it start,

Till now the Art does for the men
What I did for the Art ?

Not always truth my canvas graced,

I own it now with ruth;

But that which in truth’s room I placed
Was still more fair than truth.

But what’s hung here, or down-stairs stacked
To wait the framer’s cart,

Most of it’s neither true to fact
Nor beautiful in Art.

“ In all besides I own a growth,

If other than I dream’d :

New smiles of Nature, nothing loath,

Have on the painter beam’d :

Fired by Invention’s noble rage,

Art is creative still;

Historians’ and poets’ page
Yields new themes for her skill.

The Academy I loved and reared
All ways but one has thriven ;

Many great names, beloved, revered.

Our annals it has given.

A hundred painters thrive, for one
A century ago;

Into their pockets thousands run.

Where pounds were used to flow.

Painting finds place on every wall.

If not in every heart:

And Mammon that is Lord of All,

Is also Lord of Art.

His priests to connoisseurs have grown ;

At R.A.’s annual board.

The Millionnaire as buyer known
Rubs shoulders with my Lord.

Yes—I may look all ways but one,

And Progress greets my ken ;

But—bitter blank—the art that’s gone.

Is that of painting men.”

SPIRIT FACE PAINTING.

In a column of advertisements, addressed to fashionable idiots, occurs,
with a nominal variation only, the announcement following :—

Af ADAME JEZEBEL begs leave to inform her lady patronesses that

ILL Rer Stances of Youth aud Heautv will be held at her private residence—Three
Times a Week during the Season. Tickets one guinea each, to be had at-”

What, has Spiritualism got to the length of procuring cosmetics
from the invisible world ? Can ladies get themselves enamelled by
disembodied impostors at a seance, and made beautiful for ever? The
only effect heretofore supposed to be usually produced by spirits on |
the human countenance was one of an eruptive kind, vulgarly called
grog-blossoms. Nobody but a simpleton could expect any better from
seances at Madame Jezedel’s.

“ Hung, Drawn, and Quartered.”

(Mr. Punch's sentence on three-fourths of the Academicians’ work “ on the line.”)

Very well “bung;” very ill “drawn”; a great deal better “quar-
tered” than it deserves.

A LADY IN THE CHAIR.

When, in the good time coming, the ladies are admitted to our
Universities, there will be one post, their right to which no one will
dispute—that of Margaret Professor of Divinity.