Punch (72.1877)

168 PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI. [April 14, 1877.

A KIND SON.

Paterfamilias (to Ms Eldest Son, who is at Bartholomew's). " George, these
ake uncommonly good clgars ! i can't afford to smoke such expensive
Cigars as these."

George (grandly). "Fill your Case—fill your Case, Gov'ner ! !"

THE STUDIOS.
"round last."

Private and Confidential.—Look here, Mr. P. It really is not fair to
pretend that your Reporter was overcome by the hospitality he experienced. I
assure yon it Was the emotion ; and if I did turn into Primrose Hill Station-
House, it was simply because I mistook it for Mr. Fildes' studio, where I
understood he was painting a pendant to his great work " The Casuals," the
title of which is to be " The Pear of the Van,'' an expressive and realistic
view of the unfortunate convicts, as they are handed from the Police Omnibus
to the cells. If I might suggest to the Artist, a better title would perhaps be
" The Cells and the Sold") But this by the way. To say that I was there in
either a prostrate or a ridiculous position is to stab me with a Primrose ; and as
to Wills giving me Bird's Eye, I was not in his studio at all last round ; and
when I was there I was introduced to Miss Cavendish, who, no doubt, was
ordering her portrait or a leash of dramas (a reduction, don't you see, on taking
a quantity); and though her brilliant optic may have reminded me quite as
much of Bird's-Eye as of Cavendish, I know my manners better than to smoke
before a lady. All this, as I have intimated above, is strictly private; and I
shall take it as a personal affront if you further abuse my confidence and my
conduct in your next number. Of course, if you didn't mean it, I apologise.

Tour Reporter grieves to write " Round Last," but circumstances over which
he has not sufficient control will get the better of him. The fact is, I have had
a facer from cruel Fate that has knocked me into what is figuratively known as
a cocked hat."

I received a card—several cards—elegantly printed, embossed, and gilt-
edged, from most of the Academicians, all the Associates, and crowds of the
unappreciated outsiders, begging me "to honour them with a visit," in fact
to accept their kind invitations to criticise their works with impartiality and
enthusiasm, only—and there is much virtue in your " only"—I was expected to
call on Sunday, the First of April! Now your Reporter has no conscience-
troubled vacillations as to the right and wrong of visiting a studio on a Sunday
afternoonThere are no cornfields for him to walk through at that time of
year, and it is too chilly to be abroad in the meadows to view the young lambs—
indeed I don't think it is good for the young lambs themselves. They run the returns.

risk of cold, and though cold lamb, with mint-sauce, is not
to be sneezed at, lamb, with a cold, and sneezing, is not
pleasant. So as your critic can't pace the fields to study
the works of Nature, he does the other thing, sauntering
lazily from one work of Art to another, with much men-
tal profit and testhetic advantage at the same time. But
your Reporter is not an ordinary bird, to be caught with
chaff or salt.

Private views, on the First of April! No, you don't!
Two can play at that old game! And yet—would you
believe it ?—it was all bond fide. Show-Sunday fell on
the First this year, and the only—well, I will not say the
only fool, for I was misled by the cards of invitation, and
when I went round the studios on Tuesday (it was no use
going on Easter Monday, you know, for I am told all the
Artists go out of town on that anniversary to spend the
proverbial and much-advertised happy day at Rosher-
ville, or the best substitute for it they can find at
Brighton or Woolwich Gardens), all the doors were shut
in my face with a grin of the shutters, and the informa-
tion that I knew very well all the pictures had "gone in."

What a loss this is to the critical and artistic public,
my dear Sir, I need hardly point out. Had not this most
unhappy contretemps interrupted the course of these
"rounds," I might have described Mr. Frith's tre-
mendous effort, which he has entitled " The Crush—a
Drawing-room at St. James's." I might have told how
on this crowded canvas the Aristocratic Countess, the
Distracted Dowager, and the Delicate Debutante are
seen tearing each other's lace flounces, brocade trains,
and damasses fixings, in the desperate charge of the six
hundred into the presence of Royalty.

I might have visited the studio of that Academician
of delicate feelings who puts a fan up when you men-
tion Ettt, and makes studies of the muscular system
from the stuffed lay-figure—to whom the naked eye is an
indelicacy, and the bare walls of his own room a painful
impropriety. I would, probably, but for that unlucky
First, have written a sonnet on Mr. Sandys's grand
drawing of " Medusa Defying the Consequences" or his
poem in black chalk of " Penelope Chewing her Pack
Hair," though my lines could never come up to the
Artist's in purity and grace of outline.

I would have told you how Monsieur Tissot (who has
become so English that he prefers being called Sir Tissot,
Esquire) received me in his salon - conservatory, and
brought out for my decisive eye his charming study called
" The Female Four-Oar"—four bewitching ballet-girls,
in sailor costume, rowing with the Artist as coxswain
down at Henley. I could have given you valuable infor-
mation about his allegorical picture, " Peauty as a Peast."
" Mon, cher," (he always speaks French to_ me,) "the
British Public wants more Poetry, more Sentiment. Eh
bien, I will give it them, mon ami,—tout chaud."

You should have heard how I called on Boughton,
and saw his " Primrose Family looking for themselves
in a Wood; " how I revelled in a canvas of Orchard-
son's, fifteen feet long by two in height, called "Bill
Stickers Beware ! "—a single murdered page lying in
the right corner with a dagger in his bosom, while the
top of a middle-aged head-dress, just seen above the
broken bottles, suggests a female interest in the unfortu-
nate victim, or how I took part in Pettie's Rapier and
Dagger Fight, all point and edge, snip and snap, slish
and slash, like Petruchio's wife's gown.

I could have mentioned Storey's " Pumps at Path,"
Britton Riviere's " One Little Pig had none," Hay-
wood Hardy's " Stampede at the Zoo," Frank Holl's
" Undertaker's Delight,' Yandyke Brown's " Definitive
and Decisive Purial of Harold's Body," and Rose
Madder's " Cauliflowers and Melted Butter." But as
these pictures, like the Critic's Armada, were not in
sight, I could not see them, and so am reluctantly obliged
to be silent. And, after all, " silence is golden;'_' so pay
me for mine—a cheque will do—and do not, in your
satirical way, insinuate that I was incapacitated by
numberless nips (Number Nip, by the way, is a malig-
nant fairy who might have tempted me into excesses),
from standing another Round.

No, Sir, this would be treatment worthy of low and
scurrilous publications, not received on the drawing-
room tables of Belgravia, or the boudoir chiffoniers of
Carlton Gardens. I repeat, Sir, my silence was due to
the fact that Show Sunday happened to fall on the
First of April—a day of which I wish you many happy