Punch (86.1884)

June 21, 1884.]

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

289

THE TOWN.

III.—Kensington. Aet at Home.

Ars longa est, and long is the array

Of Art announcements which suffuse the Season

In leaden London with auroras gay

Of rosy promise. When the Embankment trees on
Droops the dim greenery of a cockney May,

Then, borne like swallow chirps October’s breeze on,
Where’er Society’s parrots Hock and chatter,

Resound artistic slang and studio patter.

Show Sunday’s come and gone. The bores and bored
Have changed their hunting-ground ; the Studio now
With adjectives prolonged, shrill, double-scored,

The ecstatic “ Per-fect! ” the astonished “ How ! ”
Echoes no longer. Posters tall and broad
Take up the tale, and Pictor’s noble brow
Is radiant with peace, with worry pale,

Ruled by the coy contingencies of sale.

What if poor wayward much-vext Ha tdon’s ghost
Could alk in Kensington ? Might he not say,
Watching the opulent artistic host,

“ The hour has struck for the Ideal to pay” ?

And yet to analyse the agreeable boast
Might lead to strange revealings. Fashion’s sway
And Mammon’s still are strong, still Taste runs mad,
And Ariel Fancy’s slave to brainless Fad.

MqThane and Mtjmbosh ! Self-made men again,

But else how different! One his country’s pride,

He who to Art brought earnestness and brain
As well as palette-magic. Stride by stride,

With virile mastery, no step in vain.

And few from fair prosperity’s path aside,

McThane advances with the splendid ease
Of Phcebus driving o’er the Orient seas.

*

Whither ? To that Art-zenith youthful zeal
Fixed as the goal of toil and vision high,

The Elysium of large thoughts whose strong appeal
The shaping force of sovereign phantasy
Fires to creative splendour ? Ah! the steel
Which keeps heroic temper still must try
Titanic tasks. Excalibur’s high work
Demands such steel,—not so the knife and fork.

To play the Titan always, straining ever
Toward the unattainable far heights
Of pure perfection, calls for stern endeavour;

Far pleasanter to woo the soft delights
Of the superbly and serenely clever.

The eagle-pinion plumed for skyward flights
May pulse through storm-wrack with a joy ecstatic,

But there’s much comfort in the tame viliatic.

Ask Mtjmbosh—Mtjmbosh of the mummy face,
Macassar’d much, a fivefold millionnaire,

Whose whisks and wrigglings of Whitechapel grace
And swaggering angularities of air
Make the nerves quiver. At his “ little place ”—

A spacious palace midmost of Mayfair—■

His painted visage proudly dominates
A millionsworth of Art,—at current rates.

The mighty Mum bosh was a shopman’s drudge,

A hawking Dulcamara smart at “ patter ” ;

Then he “ conveyed” a patent,—simple fudge,

Say for a plaster or a soap, what matter ?—

Its owner he outjockeyed and bade trudge.

Mtjmbosh had potent faith in cant ana clatter,

And cant and clatter, plus a little cash,

Saved him, though seven times on the verge of smash.

The verge ? nay, o’er it. But an oily tongue,

Shrewd schemes and “ no effects ” were his protection
Against extremity. He would have hung
Blue heaven with posters, spread the foul infection
Of lying hideousness eve’s stars among,

Or “ billed ” the dawn, if by such coarse subjection
Of Nature to the Advertiser’s art
He could have given his wares another start.

But now, his millions sacked by world-spread guile,

He turns Art-patron on a princely scale;

Name-led, yet shrewd at market-rates the while,

Arch quickener, not of genius but of sale.

His “taste” might move McThane’s broad British smile,
But proud Maecenas might with envy pale
To find his connoisseurship’s bright renown
Dimmed by the cheque-book power of a clown.

And yet if, like the tasseUed falcon, Art

Stoop to the flattering touch of Mammon’s hand;

If Humbug, having played its huckster part
To the great golden end, will swell the band
Of the sham cognoscenti, if the mart
Is reared amidst the Muses’ sunny land,

What help, since Art itself espies no dangers,

Although its temple swarm with money-changers ?

May Satire scourge them thence ? Why, Midas now
Is a sleek gentleman who undertakes
To gild the laurels on the uplifted brow

Of Genius. Studio splendour, wealth that wakes
Philistine wonder, brings blue blood to bow
Before the easel—these are highish stakes
In the great social game, which if Art play,

Even a Mtjmbosh serves to pave the way.

Too sour P too sweeping ? Well, these mansions proud,
These studios sultanesque, these halls immense,

The fulsome cackle of the applausive crowd,

Are no rewards of dull incompetence.

When Pegasus with the clown’s oxen ploughed,

He was winged hippogriff, no packhorse dense.

But Art is false to Art’s supremest claims
Which stoops with willingness to vulgar aims.

Plasters to please earth’s hordes of easy gulls
Tax only common craft, whose guerdon’s gold ;

But Mammon the fine edge of Genius dulls,

Finds it inspired, and leaves it tame and cold.

The man who on Town’s pavement chalks, and culls
Scant harvest, smears for bread ; his claim is bold.

But many a canvas on a gilded wall
Is but superb “ pot-boiling” after all.

Immortal Art! Thou proud prerogative

Of the great weakling, Man, Promethean gift,
Redeeming the dull round wherein we live,

Piercing life’s cloud-pall with a roseate rift,

Whence gleams a light great Science cannot give ;

Creative force, which worldly pride and thrift
School to subservience, till men blindly bless
The creeping palsy of a low success :

Not tliee the facile flout, the airy sneer
Assail successfully ! But, fashion-fed
And lucre-lured, thy votaries, who might peer
With Art’s unbending Abdiels, bow the head
To social shams, and sleek the Midas ear
Of any huckster-humbug who has bled
Fraud-sullied ducats freely, proud to score
In Genius one blind tributary more !

The Relief of Goedon.—Next Saturday will be the last appear-
ance this Season of Mr. Chaeles Wtndham as Geoffrey Gordon in
that most amusing of all Criterion pieces, The Great Divorce Case.
“We hear them speak of the Better Land”—and this, for Actors,
appears to be America. Absence, it is just as weU to hint to Messrs.
Ieving and Wtndham, does not make the London Theatre-going
Public’s heart “ grow fonder.” To both our advice is, in the words
of the old glee, “ Stay, brother, stay ! ”