I referred just now to mishaps that will occur with the best-regulated lanterns. The gas, for instance, may become prematurely exhausted, which necessitates a stoppage while the cylinders are being changed, and when Rudyard Kipling's work, "The Light that Failed," was published, I immediately sent for a copy, thinking that probably the author had tried entertaining with the aid of the limelight in India and had had some experience of this kind. I could give that clever author plenty of material for another volume on "The Light that Failed"—a collection of anecdotes connected with the magic lantern. But, as I said, it doesn't so much matter to the entertainer as the lecturer, who must be au serieux, and when I was a lecturer I felt any mishap of the kind very keenly; but an entertainer is a privileged being, and can turn the matter off with a joke at the expense of his manager, his gas-man, his audience, or his subject. No less a personage than Sir William Harcourt happened to be on the screen when my gas went out one evening in Scotland. I had to retire from the platform while new cylinders of gas were being adjusted, and when I made my reappearance I assured my audience that it was probably the first occasion on which Sir William had been put out for want of gas!



I recollect, though, once at Bradford, where I was lecturing, the audience were put out for want of it, for the operators supplied by the association I was lecturing to were utterly incompetent. The gas was bad, to begin with—it became small by degrees and beautifully less, and suddenly went out altogether! So did the operators. They simply bolted out of the hall, and left the lantern to manage itself.

CHAIRMEN.

Du Maurier made a delightful drawing for Punch of a sandwich advertising contractor dismissing a man with a board on which was the letter H. "Now, look 'ere, you H! The public don't want yer, nor I don't, nor nobody don't—so 'ook it!" Or something to that effect.



I wish lecturers could dismiss chairmen in the same peremptory fashion, for I am sure the public don't want him, nor I don't, nor nobody. Their boredom had better be dropped like the poor letter H—which, by the way, some chairmen drop pretty frequently.

I'll classify the chairmen as follows:—The Absent Chairman, the Ideal Chairman, the Political Chairman, and the Ignorant Chairman.

The Absent Chairman.—I must divide the Absent Chairman into two heads. Two heads are better than one, but if both are absent—the one in body and the other in mind—it is evident no head is better than two. The absent in body does not turn up at the lecture—forgets all about it, or remembers too well what he suffered before. The lecturer and his audience are kept waiting. The absent in mind does turn up, though—turns up anything but trumps. He—"ah!—feels—ah!—the honour—ah!—of presiding this evening." He "has the honour—ah!—of introducing the lecturer, a lady—ah!—a gentleman, I should say, whose name is a household word. Who does not know the name of—ah (feels in all his pockets for syllabus)—of—ah—this gentleman who is about to delight us all this evening on a—yes, yes,"—takes from his pocket a piece of paper from which he reads: "The Rev. Carbon Chalker, M.A., on Microbes found in the Middle Strata of Undiscovered Coal." "This rev. gentleman no doubt——" he proceeds, when he is quickly interrupted by the secretary, who jumps up and says, "Excuse me, Mr. Chairman, that is last year's syllabus you have in your hand."

The Ideal Chairman is one who rises and says, "Ladies and gentlemen,—I have the honour this evening to introduce to you Mr. Snooks, who has something interesting to tell you, and one hour in which to tell it. I will not stand in his way or take up your time by saying anything further." Now how seldom this happens! As a rule the chairman makes an excuse to deliver a speech on his own account. The most extraordinary case of that kind I ever heard of occurred at Birmingham. The amiable Member for one of the districts in Birmingham, whose name is always associated with "three acres and a cow," had to take the chair at a lecture given one evening to the people. As soon as the popular M.P. rose to speak there were loud cries of "Three acres—three acres! How is the coo? How is the coo?" It was just at the time when he had introduced that question. He rose to the occasion and made a long and elaborate speech upon the subject at heart. He went on speaking from about thirty-five to forty minutes. When he sat down the gentleman who had arrived from London to give his lecture on "Wit and Humour" simply rose and said: "Ladies and gentlemen,—I have the honour this evening to propose a vote of thanks to our member for his very interesting address upon the subject of 'Three Acres and a Cow.'" Someone else got up and seconded the motion, and it was carried unanimously amid great laughter and cheering. Then the chairman rose and began thanking the audience for the compliment they had paid him, and for the kind way in which they had listened to him. And a twelve-month later it dawned upon him that he was only the chairman of the meeting. This may be a pure invention, but it is the story as I heard it.



A story is told of a distinguished irritable Scotch lecturer who on one occasion had the misfortune to meet with a loquacious chairman, the presiding genius actually speaking for a whole hour in "introducing" the lecturer, winding up by saying: "It is unnecessary for me to say more, so I call upon the talented gentleman who has come so far to give us his address to-night." The lecturer came forward: "You want my address. I'll give it to you: 322, Rob Roy Crescent, Edinburgh—and I am just off there now. Good-night!"

I cannot vouch for the truth of either of these stories. However, I have known chairmen myself who were very nearly as bad. I remember one—I think he was a doctor—who rose to introduce me. Instead of two or three minutes he took ten or twelve minutes. Of course he said I was very well known, and went on with some very flattering remarks about my work, and then he added: "Ah, how well I remember—yes, ladies and gentlemen, how well I remember years ago those political sketches of the late Doyle and others, and when I think that in years to come that Mr. Furniss's attempts will be handed down to our children as I may say, recording the great events of the time we are passing through. Yes, let us see what the value will be to our children to know that Mr. Gladstone once—("Order, order," and "Hear, hear")—that, I say, Mr. Gladstone—(cries of "Sit down, we have not come to hear you")—that, I say, Mr. Gladstone, the grand old man of our time—("Sit down, sit down, sit down, we have not come to hear you—sit down")—Yes, and when I say that Lord Beaconsfield, whom I have no doubt you will see upon the sheet—("Wrap yourself up in yours, go home to bed, go home to bed")." Cries of this sort went on; the gentleman struggled on for about a quarter of an hour and then sat down. Well, I discovered afterwards that he was a very ardent politician, not altogether in tone with the audience, who were opposed to him in politics, and that he seized this chance of repeating a political speech he had often given to others of a different class. As a matter of fact my lecture that night had nothing whatever to do with Parliament; it was purely art matter; and this gentleman happened to be a great art collector and connoisseur, and in returning thanks for me afterwards made a very graceful little speech about art matters. If he had only asked me beforehand, of course it would have been a very agreeable opening instead of rather an unfortunate one. But it is quite as distressing to the lecturer to find that a chairman knows too much about his subject as to find one who knows nothing. If you happen to have delivered your lecture in another hall, and someone present who has heard you is the chairman of an evening when you are going to give it again, he will get up and inform his audience, with the usual flattery of chairmen, that there is a great treat in store for them, that he has had the pleasure of hearing you before, and you are going to tell them this, and going to tell them that, and in some cases he will even give a mangled version of some of the stories—in fact, will take all the plums out of the pudding that you have ready to tickle the appetites of your audience with.

Some chairmen impress their audience that they know far more about the subject than the lecturer. But worst of all is the chairman who knows absolutely nothing about the subject or about yourself. I remember one evening some pompous chairman getting up and saying: "I have great pleasure this evening in introducing to you Mr. Furniss. I know you have all heard of Mr. Furniss, and anyone connected as I am with engineering must look upon one of his great achievements with delight. All who have been to the great Metropolis and travelled along the Thames Embankment—a beautiful way that skirts the Thames—and have considered that at one time what was a heap of mud is now one of the handsomest thoroughfares in the world, must always consider that the work of the gentleman in front of you in being the constructor of that immense work deserves the gratitude of his countrymen, and I therefore take this occasion, before he rises to address you and enlighten you upon the engineering and the large contracting work in the great city in which he has the pleasure to live, to assure him as a brother engineer of the great work which he has performed for his fellow-countrymen."

On enquiry I discovered that a namesake of mine was the contractor for the Thames Embankment, which was built when I was in knickerbockers.

Of recent years I have had few experiences of chairmen, but proportionately their mistakes seem to be as of old. In the North of England last year I was specially engaged to appear before a literary society, and I supposed, by their paying me to go so far, they were, with Northern shrewdness, acquainted with the article in which they were investing. On these special occasions it is strange that a chairman is considered a compliment to the performer, and most certainly it affords the entertainer himself amusement. For instance, in this case I recollect my chairman—a most accomplished and representative man in the neighbourhood—was introduced to me as soon as I arrived at the hall. (I may mention it was not my first visit.) He quickly introduced me to the audience: "Ladies and gentlemen,—This evening I have the honour of introducing to you a gentleman whom we have all heard about, but few of us, if any, have seen before. We all know his work in Parliament in the pages of Punch for some years past; we all have enjoyed the writings of 'Toby, M.P.' This is Mr. H.W. Lucy, of Punch, our old friend 'Toby, M.P.'" I was giving my "Humours of Parliament," and during the evening I, of course as "Toby, M.P.," informed the audience at times that this was Harry Furniss's idea of Parliament, but I begged to differ with that gentleman, and it was rather a variety for me to play a Parliamentary Jekyl and Hyde for one night only.



If one must have a chairman, why should not the performer be allowed to turn a chairman into account, as that popular and versatile barrister, the late Sir Frank Lockwood, was in the habit of doing? When he lectured at Hackney he "brought down the house" in his description of Sergeant Buzfuz in "Pickwick" by giving a laughable imitation of his chairman—the late Lord Chief Justice, when Sir Charles Russell—cross-examining a witness. For all I know, others may follow the example of poor Lockwood. We shall read of the Bishop of Ripon giving imitations of the Archbishop of Canterbury; Sir Alexander Mackenzie is ready to make the musical world roar by his burlesque of Paderewski; and Lord Kitchener, when he returns from the war and gives the inevitable lecture, will delight military circles by his imitations of his chairman, the Commander-in-Chief.



But I personally have no objection to a chairman if I am announced as a lecturer and it is the habit of the particular society to pay the lecturer the compliment of formally introducing him. But my appearances as a lecturer are few and far between, and when I, as I generally do, appeal direct to the public, I am most anxious to avoid giving my platform work any appearance of a lecture; yet the Press insist upon any entertainment given by men of my class being a lecture. I am a bit of an amateur conjurer, and I thoroughly believe were I to appear on the platform on a bicycle or on an acrobat's globe, and keep three balls in the air with one hand and spin a plate on a stick with the other, and at the same time retail some stories, the notice in the Press on the following morning would begin: "Mr. Harry Furniss gave an instructive lecture last night on subjects with which we are familiar. Some of his stories were good, some poor, and some we had heard before." And that is the rub! We had heard some stories before! I repeat I honestly have no objection to a chairman—the Ideal Chairman, who will inform the audience that you are an acrobat, and not a lecturer; but I do object to my friends and brother journalists who will tell the public you are a lecturer when you are not, keeping many of their readers away, and who will also publish your jokes. Of course, all stories are "chestnuts" an hour after they are told. When I first went on the platform I retailed new stories, but they were invariably served up in the next morning's papers, and were therefore known to many of the audience who came to hear me on the following evening. In fact, I once overheard a man at breakfast in an hotel saying, "No, I don't think much of Furniss; I have read that story of his about the pumpkin in the papers." Now this story of the pumpkin was an impromptu of mine the evening before, and I was naturally puzzled by over-hearing this remark. When the speaker left the room I took up the paper he had been reading. It contained an account of my effort on the platform the night before, and my impromptu story was in it!

Of course, as in everything else, one must not be too original on the platform if he is to be served up in every course. If you treat general subjects in anything but a general way, and you are humorous and occasionally satirical, you will find that national failing, want of humour, will tell against you, as well as certain prejudices political and social. The selection of lecturers is generally in the hands of a committee. You have probably said something that grated upon the Radical opinions of one member, or upon the old Tory prejudices of another, or told some joke that they failed to see. So long as you keep to microbes, and heavenly bodies, and objects of the sea, you are proportionately successful with your dulness. But to be professionally humorous and a critic is to be eyed with suspicion. Your programme is criticised and generally misunderstood. Perhaps I can show no better instance of this than what occurred to me in connection with my old friend "Lewis Carroll," the author of "Alice in Wonderland."

The Rev. C. L. Dodgson ("Lewis Carroll") in some respects was the typical Oxford Don—once a schoolmaster always a schoolmaster. He lectured his friends as he had lectured his youths, and treated grown-up men of the world as if they were children. In due course I visited Oxford to give my entertainments—"Humours of Parliament" first; "America in a Hurry" followed a few years afterwards. In the latter I gave a wordless imitation of that eccentric American, Talmage, at the same time carefully pointing out to my audience that I imitated his gestures and voice—not Talmage in the character of a preacher, but as a showman; I was therefore surprised to receive the following letter:

"CHRISTCHURCH, OXFORD.

"DEAR MR. FURNISS,—Yesterday I went to Russell's shop and bought four 5s. tickets for your American entertainment on the 23rd, thinking I would treat three young friends to it, and feeling quite confident that there could be no objectionable feature in any entertainment produced by you. An hour afterwards I chanced to notice in the programme the item 'A Sermon in Spasms,' and, in the quotations from Press notices, a commendation of your 'clever imitations of Dr. Talmage's sermons,' and immediately went and returned the tickets.... It did not seem necessary to speak (to the shopkeeper) of the more serious aspect of such an insult to Christianity, and such profaning of holy things...."

I hastened to assure the rev. gentleman that Talmage was an "entertainer," like myself, that I used no words in imitation of him; merely his eccentric manner and showman's voice. I also hinted that I always had a number of clergymen in my audiences, and those who had heard me found nothing whatever objectionable, nor could they detect in what I did anything touching upon sacred things. This brought a lengthy rejoinder, from which I quote the following interesting passage:

"The fact that thousands of clergymen have not been deterred by that announcement from going to the entertainment does not surprise me. In this age of ever-increasing irreverence, it is my lot to hear many a profane anecdote told; and the worst offenders in this line are, I am sorry to say, Clergymen."

If this was so—and the Rev. C. L. Dodgson could not possibly exaggerate any more than "Lewis Carroll" could avoid exaggeration—how much better it would have been for him to listen to my wordless and harmless imitation of a public entertainer than to sit in the Common Room and listen to profane anecdotes from the lips of his fellow ministers of religion!

To those about to appear on the platform I would give the same advice as Mr. Punch gave to those about to marry—"Don't." "Lectures," "Readings," or whatever they are called, are very little in demand now compared with twelve years ago. Many of the literary institutes and lecture societies are either dying from inanition or are content with a course of lectures of a poor description. This has been brought about by trying to do the thing on the cheap, and thereby disgusting the subscribers, who are not going to turn out of their cosy, warm houses on a winter's night to hear a poor speaker with a dull subject. The subscription lists are therefore depleted, and the societies cannot afford to engage experienced lecturers and entertainers.

It is a great mistake to imagine one has only to "write something," and, provided with a few "slides," a reading-desk, and a glass of water—and a chairman, mount a platform and read. Of course, an agent can always "boom" a novice—someone who has travelled, or written a book, or gone to smash, or become notorious in any way—for a course of "lectures," provided there are sufficient chairmen to be found willing to act as an extra draw.



Anyone nowadays thirsting for notoriety jumps on to the platform as a lecturer. He may have been "Perhaps a soldier full of 'cute ways, and fearless like his Pa! Stake your dollar sudden and quick to boom. Seeking a bauble reputation even at the Commons mouth." Or he may have been an aristocratic stowaway in a troop-ship, for instance, and become the hero in the pages of our new English-Americanised Press paying for and publishing his startling disclosures.

The lecture is the natural sequence of the boom fever—a lecture, say, on "Red Tape Rats." A reading-desk, a glass of water, a map, a few amateurish snapshot slides exhibited by means of a lantern, and a great and popular chairman—then success is assured. But the crowd is not present to be interested in rats, nor are the reporters there to write about rats, nor is the chairman presiding so as to refer to the stowaway's paper on rats. For the chairman has his own Red Tape Rats to let loose with which to startle the audience and nobble the Press. The next day the report of the lecture is not headed "The Hon. Babbling Brook on Rats," but runs "An Admiral of the Fleet on Naval Reform," or "A Field Marshal with a Grievance," and a list of the fashionable party on the platform is considered of more importance than the lecturer's remarks.



In more tranquil times a penny-reading style of entertainment will suffice. A bishop or a duke may take the chair, and Charity take the proceeds. But the chairman with a name is the thing with which to catch the interest of the public.

What I have said about lecturing in England applies equally to America and Australia, and I wish it to be distinctly understood that, as I am writing these lines for the benefit of those who think of accepting the tempting offers to go on the platform, I have no personal feeling in the matter whatever. Both in America and in Australia I have had splendid audiences; but in consequence of the long distances and expenses lecturing does not pay, and the stories one reads about men returning with thousands and thousands of pounds in their pockets are absolutely false. Do not believe them. They are manufactured statements for booming purposes. Dr. Conan Doyle honestly gave his opinion, and the correct one, that taking one thing with another you can make just as much money in England as you can in America or the Colonies. Of course there are exceptions,—I might more truly say accidents. Even a poor speaker, if he happens to be a clergyman (and some critics are unkind enough to say that these generally go together), and an author who has written a successful story, may in America have a great chance of making money, for the publishers and booksellers will advertise and push him so as to sell his books,—they will go so far as turning their shops into ticket offices. Then, too, he will find the meenisters, particularly if he is a Scotchman, will advertise him in advance from their pulpits, and probably in return get the "lecturer" to preach a sermon. Consequently he has two publics to work upon which no other lecturer or reader can procure,—the religious and the literary. But that is not a genuine test of the professional lecturer or reader. All literary men on the platform will get a certain number of people who have read their books in a celebrity-hunting country. They want to see the author, and once they have seen him they are satisfied. Return visits I know of, such as these, have been appalling failures. No, a man must give an entertainment which is in itself amusing and of such stuff that people will go even if any one else had given it—metal attractive to his audience, instead of merely being looked upon as a curiosity in the same way that one looks upon an orchid in a flower-show or a prize ox at Islington. But for the ordinary man, no matter how good he may be, to expect to have a triumphal tour, returning with a shipload of American dollars, is, believe me, absurd on the face of it. The lecture business died out years ago. When that country was younger all the people in the provinces attended lectures as part of their daily education, but now that class of entertainment is as out-of-date as a German Reed entertainment.

I confess that I was overworked at one time. As an illustration of mere physical endurance it is perhaps worth recording. In fact, much in these pages might well have been published under the title of "Confessions of Endurance" in Sandow's magazine or in the Lancet, for the edification of those professional men who give advice to others not to overwork and invariably overwork themselves at the same time. Travelling every day, giving "The Humours of Parliament," with my imitations of ranting M.P.'s—nearly a two hours' tearing recitation—to large audiences every night, was perhaps sufficient for one man. The excitement of the success I made, the "booming," interviewing, and unavoidable entertainment at every town, the late hours, the early start, the business worries, fresh to each place, day after day, week after week, can only be understood by those who have gone through it. But this was only part of my work. Each week as I travelled I had to keep up my contributions to Punch—a whole page and several small drawings. I also wrote an article, fully illustrated, on every town I went to week by week for Black and White (subsequently reprinted in book form, "On Tour"), to say nothing of drawing in the train.

Let me briefly give a fair average of one day's work at the time:



Morning.—Start 9.30 train, eight hours' journey,—means up at seven, breakfast at eight. In train dictate letters to secretary, who takes down in shorthand. (I never yet found a secretary who could write in a train. I can write quite easily; the secret is to sit up, holding pad in hand, and let the body move with the oscillation of the train. To write on your knee or on a table, or in any other way but this, is impossible.) 3.30 arrive at destination; go to hotel and order dinner. Then to my "travelling studio"—a large case fitted up with everything necessary for drawing in black and white. Straight to private sitting-room, order dinner to be ready in half-an-hour, at work at once—before the others and the luggage arrive. After light dinner, to hall or theatre to see if arrangements are complete. Then visit from local manager or secretary—friends—strangers, a walk round the town to get "copy," tea, a good hour's drawing (no matter how tired I can work on tea), dress, off to evening's work on stage; autographs to be written and people to meet; back to change, supper at some club, speeches; back 3 a.m., bed, sleep—no, only occasionally. Hotel servants turn on electric light, begin sweeping the passage—sw—w—w—whish, sw—w—w—whish! they chat and laugh just outside one's door; they gradually sweep down the long, long passage. Doze—sleep. Bang, bang! "Five o'clock, sir." Bang, bang! the Boots awakening commercial men for early trains. Thump, thump! baggage packing-room over your head. Commercial, or sportsman, or entertainer, or whatever he may be, whistles or sings loudly as he dresses. Altercation with Boots about trains in passage. Bells, bells! "Hot water, hot water. Bath ready, sir." Train leaves at 8.15. I'm up. Something attempted—sleep—something not done,—I have earned but not got a night's repose. So in the cold, wet, misty morning off again with a heart for any amount of work; still achieving, still pursuing, learning to labour—and not to wait!

Mr. E.J. Milliken, of Punch, frequently wrote to me in 'Arry verse. When I was confined to my bed with fever in the summer of 1893, I was terribly busy. I had my Punch work, my syndicated "London Letter" (a column-and-a-half of a newspaper, with four or five illustrations), and much other work to do every week, and I, much against my doctor's and nurse's wish, worked all the time. A propos of this I received the following:

"'ARRY TO HARRY.

"DEAR 'ARRY,

"'Ow are yer, old 'ermit? I 'opes you're gittin' on prime For a sick man you put in good work, mate, and make the best use o' your time. You're like no one else, that's a moral. When I'm ill I go flabby as suet, But you keep the pot at full bile! 'Ow the doose do yer manage to do it?

"I'm glad to believe you're a-mendin', though kep' on the strictest Q.T. The confinement must fret you, I'm sure, 'ow I wish I could drop in to see, And give you a regular rouser. But that is a pleasure to come; When we do meet again, we will split a fizz magnum, and make the thing hum.

"I drop yer these lines just to show yer you ain't gone slap out o' my 'ed, Because I'm cavortin' round pooty permiskus, while you're nailed to bed! 'Taint a prison I'm nuts on, old pal, and I'll swear as it doesn't suit you, So 'ere's wishin' you out of it, 'Arry, and well on Life's war-path, Hurroo!!!

"I sent over my pasteboard this mornin' to do the perlite cummy fo, But this 'ere is entry noo barney, a bit of a lark like, yer know. I picter you jest rampin' round like a big arktic bear in a cage! Well, keep up yer pecker, my pippin, and keep down yer natural rage. I'm yours to command, when you want me, to gossip or work, fetch or carry;

"And that Harry may soon be O.K. and a 'arf, is the wish of

"Yours, "'ARRY."

I should like to confess my real reason for going on to the platform. The fact is that for many years I was mistaken in the country, particularly in Liverpool, Leeds and Bradford, for an artist who signed political caricatures "H. F.," and whose name, strange to say, is Harold Furniss. I understand he is about twice my size. So that I thought if I showed myself in public, particularly in the provinces, it would be seen that I was not this Mr. Harold Furniss. Now, unfortunately, on the stage or platform I look tall—in fact, bets have been made that I am over six feet high. On three or four occasions after I have left the platform or the stage I have had to grant an interview to gentlemen who have made bets on this point. The explanation is, however, simple enough: as there is no one on the stage or platform but myself, there is nothing to give my height, so the particular object of my appearing in public was frustrated.



CHAPTER XII.

MY CONFESSIONS AS A "REFORMER."

Portraiture Past and Present—The National Portrait Gallery Scandal—Fashionable Portraiture—The Price of an Autograph—Marquis Tseng—"So That's My Father!"—Sala Attacks Me—My Retort—Du Maurier's Little Joke—My Speech—What I Said and What I Did Not Say—Fury of Sala—The Great Six-Toe Trial—Lockwood Serious—My Little Joke—Nottingham Again—Prince of Journalists—Royal Academy Antics—An Earnest Confession—My Object—My Lady Oil—Congratulations—Confirmations—The Tate Gallery—The Proposed Banquet—The P.R.A. and Modern Art—My Confessions in the Central Criminal Court—Cricket in the Park—Reform!—All About that Snake—The Discovery—The Capture—Safe—The Press—Mystery—Evasive—Experts—I Retaliate—The Westminster Gazette—The Schoolboy—The Scare—Sensation—Death—Matters Zoological—Modern Inconveniences—Do Women Fail in Art?—Wanted a Wife.



My attack upon the National Portrait Gallery was in the form of a lecture entitled "Portraiture Past and Present." I found the subject so large, so complicated, I may say so octopus-like, embracing such varied periods and phases, and throwing forth its arms or ramifications in so many directions, that I soon discovered I was struggling with a monster subject, with which it was impossible to grapple completely in the limited time allowed for the performance. Still I managed in a light way to review the history of portraiture from Dibutades to Millais, and from its display in the Temples to its discouragement at the National Portrait Gallery, taking as my text Carlyle's dictum that "Human Portraits faithfully drawn are of all pictures the welcomest on Human Walls," a sentiment that appeals to all, for there is no doubt human beings interest us more than anything else. The Pyramids of Egypt awe, but our interest is in those who raised them; Ancient Rome enchants in exact proportion to our interest in the Ancient Romans; the Forum is but a frame which the imagination instinctively fills with the forms of the mighty men who moved there; the Amphitheatre would have little interest but for those who made its dust; and when we wander through our Parliament at Westminster it is not so much the place that interests us as the senators associated with its name. I confess that when I travel on the Continent I cut cathedrals and study the people, in the boulevards, in the streets, in the market-place. When I have spare time in London I do the same, and at one time made a point of spending a day now and then wandering about the East End of London for the purpose of studying character; and it was while so occupied that I happened to stray into our National Portrait Gallery. I was astonished and disgusted at such a collection having such a name, and there and then decided that I would make this the subject of my lecture, and the following is briefly my indictment as I then laid it before the Grand Jury, composed of the Press and the Public:

"Of all places, a Portrait Gallery should appeal to you most, and the National Portrait Gallery is the place in which to spend a happy day.

"That is, if you are not critical. If you are, then get thee to a library and bury thyself in books of biography, for portrait painters were deceivers ever, historical portrait painters in particular.

"The National Portrait Gallery was founded about thirty years ago, and the founder, Lord Stanhope, had the audacity to ask for a yearly grant of L500 for the purpose of supplying the nation with a representative collection of national portraits. The first purchase made by the trustees was a portrait of Sir Walter Raleigh (rather suggestive of the undertaking ending in smoke). However, it has struggled on, such as it is.

"Truly it is in no sense a National Portrait Gallery, and although the richest and most civilised nation in the world now generally grants L1,000 a year to supply itself with representative portraits of its great men and women, being I may say about the price of one portrait by a successful painter, the portraits of our great lights do not swell the number of the collection.

"It has been difficult, no doubt, even with this immense amount of cash, to get portraits of those of the past. They have been locked up in the stately homes of England.

"Of late years Charles Surface, Earl of Spendthrift, knocks his ancestors down to the highest chance bidder, but the National Portrait Gallery knows them not.

"The reason of this is not far to seek.

"Taking up at random an annual report of the trustees, I read: 'The salaries of officials amount to L1,176, other expenses L591, the police L635, total L2,402.' And now we come to the interesting item: 'The money spent on the purchase of portraits L255'! But the particular section of the report dealing with this item says seven works have been purchased for L143 18s.—that is, L20 11s. 1d. each.

"Small wonder then that many works in the National Portrait Gallery of England—England where portraiture flourishes—are unworthy of the attendance of even L35 worth of policemen. Can we wonder when L635 is paid to the police to gaze at L143 18s. worth of portraits, the purchase of the year?" and so on.

The result of this "ridiculing the State," as the Times, in its leader, expressed it, for the penurious pittance it doles out of the revenues of the richest country in the world towards the maintenance of a National Portrait Gallery, was that I was the cause of arousing the Press of Great Britain to the miserable condition of the National Portrait Gallery, which ended in our having one in its place more worthy of the country.

Besides drawing public attention to the National Portrait Gallery, in the same lecture I put in a word for the struggling unknown portrait painters. Speaking of payment reminded me of the story told of Bularchus, a successful painter 716 B.C. Candaules, King of Lydia, paid him with as much gold as would cover the surface of the work. I told my audience that I doubted whether, if that system existed now, the portrait painters would leave any room at all on the Academy walls for subject pictures.

Would Meissonier or Alma Tadema, say, paint your portrait for three napoleons, and would you pay Slapdash, R.A., fifteen thousand for a larger one? I then made the assertion, "It is not too much to say that a fashionable portrait painter often receives L900 for his name, and L100 for the value of the picture to the sitter as a portrait. It is the artist's autograph with a dash of something attached." I asked, "Why should snobbery tempt those away from an honest, well-painted portrait by a less-known man, to accept a failure with a Society signature?" a query that was replied to by my receiving any number of letters from all over the country asking me to recommend artists; in fact, at the time I might have started an agency for portrait painters. One of the artists I suggested had already had a very striking portrait of the Chinese Ambassador, Marquis Tseng, hung in the Academy, and over that painting he had had a trying experience. His sitter, like Queen Elizabeth, objected to shadows, not like the conceited Queen through vanity, but, being an Oriental, he really did not understand what the shadows were, and rushed to the glass to see if his face was dirty. He was a high official in his own country, and naturally anxious not to be mistaken for the Dirty Boy. Again he got into a frightful state at the glazy appearance of his skin—it was an oil painting.

"Only opium-eaters have shiny skins, and I am free from that vice. This is a libel, sir, and will disgrace me at home."

Then he had no idea of perspective, but a great idea of his own rank, and commanded my bewildered brother-artist to paint the red button on the top of his hat, the feather down the back, the orders in front, and was disappointed that his different coats and sashes, three and four deep, could not all be shown at once.

Another illustration of the difficulties of portrait painters I gave in the same lecture has since been so frequently repeated in the Press that I fear it will be stale to most of my readers—the story of the man who called upon the portrait painter and asked him to paint his father.

"But where is your father?"

"Oh, he died ten years ago."

"Then how can I paint him?" asked the artist.

"Why, I've just seen your picture of Moses, and surely if you can paint the portrait of a man who died thousands of years ago, you can more easily paint my father, who has only been dead ten years!"

Seeing the sort of man with whom he had to deal, the young artist agreed to paint the defunct gentleman, and the picture in due time was sent home. It was carefully hung on the drawing-room wall, and the newly-blossomed art patron was called in to see it. He gazed at it for some time in silence, his eyes filled with tears, and then, slowly nodding his head, he said softly and reverently, "So that is my father! Ah, how he is changed!"

But out of this lecture comes another story—the story of "The Great Six Toes Trial." I must start at the beginning of its strange, eventful history, the same way as, in my lecture, I began with the origin of portraiture.

Now the late George Augustus Sala, in his leader in the Daily Telegraph on this lecture, accused me of not giving the origin of portraiture. "Mr. Harry Furniss was bold enough to maintain that, although Greek art remained the model art of the world, portraiture had very little to do with it. Mr. Furniss should not tell this story to the prehistoric toad, for that reptile's presumably long memory might enable it to remind the graphic artist that thousands of years ago the art of portraiture was invented by a sentimental young Greek girl, the daughter of a potter of Corinth, Dibutades." In the same article he sneered at "a whimsical caricaturist lecturing his contemporaries," and in his references to me was about as offensive as he could be.



The second stage was my letter to the Editor of the Daily Telegraph. That paper not printing it, I sent it, with a note, to the Editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, who gave both letters a prominent position:

"SIR,—Can you find space for the publication of the following letter which I addressed to the Daily Telegraph in answer to their leader in last Friday's issue, as the insignificant paragraph, 'Greek Portraits,' which alone the Daily Telegraph inserted, in no way states the facts of the case?"

"SIR,—The writer of the leader in your issue of last Friday is guilty of the very fault of which he accuses me. He charges me with not acquainting myself with the subject I treated of in my lecture; he has manifestly not troubled to acquaint himself with that lecture. The ignorance—at any rate, the omissions—that he lays to my door do not exist. Did he expect me in the course of a short hour's lecture to a general audience—which was certainly not prepared for any history or technicalities—to bring forward in my opening sentences the whole story of the rise and development of Greek portraiture? The principal omission of which he complains is the legend of the daughter of Dibutades—calling it an omission because, forsooth, he did not read it in the Times report! But, in point of fact, not only did I give the story at length, but I reproduced on the screen Mortimer's well-known picture of the incident. Surely it is not too much to ask, even for a caricaturist to ask—for such he somewhat scornfully terms me—that when so powerful a personality as a leader writer levels his pen against an individual, however humble, he should not depend upon the report of another newspaper, the exigencies of whose space naturally prevent, it may be assumed, the devotion of more than a column verbatim report to any utterances of a 'mere caricaturist.' But, frankly, does the nature of my own occupation in the arts preclude me from pronouncing a correct judgment on portraits and portraiture? For that, after all, is the burden of your article. Is not an opinion, if correct, as good coming from a bootblack as from a Royal Academician? If so, I submit that mine, if worthy of discussion at all, might at least be ascertained and be considered with respect. If not, then I bring the lecture of Professor Herkomer, A.R.A., published on the very same day as your article, to witness that my judgment was a fair one. By a curious coincidence, he lectured at Leeds on the self-same subject within twenty-four hours of the delivery of my own little lecture; he travelled over much the same ground; brought forward in some instances the very same examples as I, and deduced very much the same conclusions."

I happened to call in at the Garrick Club on my way to the Punch dinner, and there found a copy of the Daily Telegraph containing the leader, on the margin of which was written with the familiar purple ink, in Lewis Wingfield's handwriting, "G.A.S. on Hy. F." Wingfield was Sala's neighbour and friend, so this settled any doubt I had about the authorship of the article I have just referred to. When I showed it to du Maurier, who sat next to me at dinner, he said, "I say, old chap, I'll tell you a capital story about Sala which you might use. When he was an art student, he tried to get into the Art Schools of the Royal Academy, and for that purpose had to draw the usual head, hand, and foot. When the Examiners counted the toes on the foot Sala had drawn, they found six, so Sala didn't get in, don't you know!" Now, as other journalists had quoted Sala against me, and a Nottingham paper attacked me in a long and rather vulgar and offensive leader, I, finding myself shortly afterwards the guest of the Literary Club in Nottingham, seized the opportunity to reply. I regretted—though I supposed it was flattering to me—to find that quite recently, although I had been treated for many years with the greatest kindness in the Press, I had been rather attacked. "I was proud," I said, "to find that the first person to attack me in the Press was the greatest journalist the Press possessed—Mr. George Augustus Sala." What I really said after this I print side by side with what I was reported to have said:

"WHAT I SAID.

"I have not the pleasure of Mr. Sala's personal acquaintance, but no one has a greater admiration than I have for that great man in literature. Mr. Sala began life as an artist; not only so, but he began in that walk of art which I pursue, like another great man of the pen had done before him, for, of course, you all know the story of Thackeray going to Dickens and offering to illustrate his books. Dickens declined Thackeray's offer, and it is generally believed that that refusal so annoyed Thackeray that he became a writer and a rival to Dickens. It was a very good thing for him and for literature that Dickens gave him the refusal he did. Now, Mr. Sala, as I said, also began life as an artist, and I am informed that when an applicant for the Royal Academy he had to send in for examination the usual chalk drawings of a head, a hand, and a foot. The Examiners, however, discovered that Sala had drawn six toes on the foot. He was rejected, and no doubt this caused him, like Thackeray, to forsake the pencil for the pen, and he is now Art Critic of the Daily Telegraph.

"In 1851 Mr. Sala painted the pictures upon the walls of an eating saloon, and that probably had given him the taste for cooking which he had evinced ever since."

"HOW I WAS REPORTED.

"He (Mr. Furniss) had not the pleasure of Mr. Sala's personal acquaintance, but no one had a greater admiration for him than he had as being a great man in literature. Mr. Sala began life as an artist, and not only so, but he began in that walk of life which he (Mr. Furniss) pursued. He went to Dickens, and wanted to illustrate his books, but Dickens would not have the sketches; afterwards Mr. Sala went into literature, and it was a very good thing for him and for literature that Dickens gave him the refusal that he did. (Hear, hear.)

"Mr. Sala began not only as an artist, but as a caricaturist, and he had to send into the Academy Schools three 'short drawings,' as they were called, of a head, a hand, and a foot. Unfortunately for Mr. Sala, he had six toes upon the foot he drew, and the Examiner, having counted these toes, pointed the matter out to Mr. Sala, who did not get into the Academy Schools, so now he was the Art Critic of the Daily Telegraph. In 1851, Mr. Sala painted the pictures upon the walls of an eating saloon, and that probably had given him the taste for cooking which he had evinced ever since."

The reporter had evidently trusted to his memory, and not to shorthand notes—thus the blunder. I pointed it out, and at once corrected it in a letter printed in the same paper a day or so afterwards. My object in all sincerity was to have a joke—du Maurier's joke—at Sala's expense, but in leading up to it my very complimentary and perfectly accurate parallel illustration of Thackeray was unfortunately, by the reporter's carelessness, attributed to Sala!

This correction was entirely lost sight of by the Press, and I was accused by papers all over the country of having falsely accused him of offering to illustrate Dickens. Papers printed apologies to Sala, and in some cases paid Sala's solicitor money to avoid actions-at-law. I then heard that he was going for me. I found a letter from Burnand to that effect the evening I returned from a lecturing tour. Strange to say, that night Sala and I were both guests of a Medical Society's dinner at the Holborn Restaurant. Both had to make speeches. I spoke before Sala, and referred to a misquotation from a speech I had made in the country, and purposely then and there made the amende honorable, of which he at least understood the meaning. He ignored this altogether, and I now merely mention the incident to show that he was vindictive from the very first. He would not listen to reason. Sir George Lewis, Mr. Labouchere, Mr. Burnand, and other mutual friends failed: Sala remained obdurate. It was freely reported after the verdict was given that the plaintiff never had any desire to make money out of me, and had specially instructed his counsel not to ask for damages! As a matter of fact, when our mutual friends implored Sala not to proceed with such a trivial and ridiculous action, he admitted that he wanted money, and in conversation with Sir George Lewis—who all through acted as my good friend, and Sala's too, doing all in his power (which is great) to induce Sala to accept my necessary amende,—Sala declined. He had already pocketed several amounts from papers publishing the Nottingham paper's fanciful report, and said to Sir George: "When Friswell libelled me, I got L500 damages; and why should I not be equally successful against Furniss?" "Yes," said the astute Sir George, "but you must remember that I got you that L500, and now I am on the other side."



What I really said, and what I was reported to have said, here I plainly show are two very different things. Still, in the words "and now he is Art Critic of the Daily Telegraph" there was a germ of libel—slander one must call it, as the words were spoken—so I was advised to withdraw. Sala, however, made this an impossibility, and the silly action, fanned into "almost European importance," to quote Lockwood, was to be. To make matters worse, just before the

GREAT SIX TOES TRIAL

I received a note from du Maurier:

"I am awfully sorry, old chap, but the capital story I told you of Sala and the six toes was about another fellow after all!"

Although a letter from me was published immediately correcting this ridiculous blunder on the part of the reporters, pointing out that what I did say was that Mr. Sala was not the only literary man who began life as an artist; and that I had quoted casually as an instance that Thackeray in early life went to Dickens, my correction—though well known to Sala—was, to my surprise, ignored, and the words I had never used were made the point of the whole action!



Mr. Kemp, counsel for Sala, rolled them out with unctuousness then paused for the Judge to write them down. Mr. Sala, in the witness-box, in melodramatic style denied that he had ever taken sketches to Dickens, and the jury noted that fact. Yet I had never said he did! and furthermore Sala knew I had referred to Thackeray and not to him. Still, for some reason I could never understand, Lockwood allowed this to pass, and cross-examined Sala, admitting that he had heard the story of Thackeray and Dickens—as to my right as a critic—but never denied that these words attributed to me were absolutely a false report! The next point Sala made was that an "offensive caricature" (reproduced by permission on this page) was by me! It was Mr. F. C. Gould's. Sala knew this; so did Lockwood, but he did not deny it: in fact, when the jury considered their verdict, the two points they were clear upon were (1) that I said Sala had offered work to Dickens, and had been refused; (2) that I was the author of the clever (but in Sala's opinion most offensive) caricature of himself and me.



I prompted Lockwood in Court, but he told me that he would not bother about facts, or call me, or deny anything—he took the line that the whole thing was too absurd for serious consideration, and that he would "laugh it out of Court."

One report says that "Mr. Lockwood handled Mr. Sala very gently in cross-examination, and got from him an explosive declaration that Mr. Furniss's statements represented him as an ignorant and impudent pretender. 'Don't be angry with me, Mr. Sala.'"

But the Judge was angry with dear, good, kind Frank Lockwood, and scotched his humour, and refused to allow him to "laugh it out of Court." It annoyed him, and he summed up dead against me. Lockwood could only squeeze one joke out of the whole thing.

Sala in cross-examination said to Lockwood in a bombastic, inflated, Adelphi-drama style:

"That was not my greatest artistic work. Perhaps my greatest was an engraving of the funeral of the Duke of Wellington. It was from my original drawings. I engraved it on a steel plate, and it contained many thousand figures."

Lockwood: "All, I suppose, had the proper number of toes?" (Laughter.)

"They had boots on." (Continued laughter.)

Sala got five pounds for the Judge's want of humour, not for mine.

Having no chance of making my little joke in Court, I took my revenge by accepting a commission to report and illustrate my own trial for the Daily Graphic, and the following—the only authentic account of the Great Six Toes Trial—appeared the following morning:

"It was unfortunate that the Royal Academicians were all busy varnishing their pictures for the forthcoming exhibition at Burlington House when the Great Sala-Furniss Libel Case was heard on Friday last, and that in their absence you have had to apply to me (the defendant) for sketches of the scene in Court. What a chance Mr. Calderon has missed for a companion picture to the one he is painting of another great legal battle—the Parnell Commission! A picture in next year's Royal Academy of the trial between two art critics is surely worthy to be handed down to posterity, say, in the Council Room of the Royal Academy.

"That the subject is not a picturesque one, I admit, but I can offer the painter an historical incident connected with it that should recommend itself. We all know that Sir Francis Drake playing at bowls when the Spanish Armada was sighted is a favourite theme with artists. In this case, although there is nothing Spanish about it, there is a parallel incident. I was, like Drake, by the sad sea waves, not playing at bowls, but sketching a common, or garden, donkey, when a telegram arrived from London to say that the great trial was in sight, and my presence was demanded at the Royal Courts of Justice (Court 3) at eleven o'clock the following morning. Let it be recorded that my nerve was equal to the great Admiral's—I finished the drawing of that donkey.



"The morning was a gloomy one, and no doubt the weather had something to do with the solemn tone of the proceedings. A collection of briefless barristers, irritated jurymen, and wet umbrellas in dark corridors is not enlivening; and when you arrive, to find the Court crowded, and you happen to be, like me, considerably under the medium height, and rather broad in proportion, it is difficult to come up at all, much less smiling, to the feet of justice. Here is a subject for a Punch puzzle. The defendant—how is he to get into Court? It is a mystery to me how I managed to squeeze myself through. I stuck to my hat, and my hat pulled me through (alas, a new one!). The hat was more rubbed the wrong way by the trial than was its wearer; but it is an item in the expense of legal warfare that ought not to be forgotten by the taxing master. However, I found myself sitting next my consulter and friend, the 'sage of Ely Place,' in good time. Although a case is down to be tried in a particular Court, it may be transferred to another Court at a moment's notice. This is bewildering to the parties interested and, from what I saw, irritating to the legal fraternity. Tomkins v. Snooks is down for trial, Court 2. The legal call-boys bustle in the counsel and others engaged. Mr. Buzfuz, Q.C., pushes his way into Court, surrounds himself with briefs and other documents, when some mysterious harlequin of the Law Courts changes Tomkins v. Snooks to Court 4, and calls upon Brown v. Jones, who are packed away in Court 3, waiting their turn. Buzfuz gets very angry, and bustles off to Court 4. In fact, getting your case into Court reminded me forcibly of that amusing toy, so popular then, called 'Pigs in Clover'—wigs in clover, I was nearly writing. I apologise at once for the mere thought. We were transferred from one Court to another, and our friends sat out a case in the Court advertised to try ours, wondering what on earth 'The Prince of Journalists' and I had to do with 'chops and tomato sauce.' What followed has been pretty fully reported, so I need not dwell upon it. Indeed, I could not live in the frightful atmosphere of those Courts, and would gladly pay twice five pounds to be allowed to sit on the roof if ever I find myself a defendant again.



"According to the reports, 'the plaintiff was supported by his wife, and the defendant by the editor of Punch.' The solemn occasion demanded a certain amount of gravity, which was particularly difficult for me to retain, as my 'supporter,' although fully alive to the tremendous bearings of the case and the importance of the issues, failed to hide in his expression those 'happy thoughts' that flow ceaselessly through his fertile brain. The outward effect was a see-saw antic with his imposing eyebrows—a proof to me that his sense of the ridiculous had got the better of his gravity. 'Put on your gloves at once,' he whispered impressively to me. 'Why?' I asked. 'Because you may then leave the court with clean hands!' (The 'putting on the gloves' must not be taken in a double sense.) But this is a digression. You merely ask for sketches in Court. Well, I send you my recollection of Mr. Kemp, Q.C., trying to be very angry with me; of my 'brother caricaturist' (vide reports), Mr. Lockwood, struggling to be very angry with Mr. Kemp, and pointing to the defendant, 'That miscreant! (note the effect upon me), and the Judge very serious with everybody. As an antidote, I was spoiling a beautiful sheet of white blotting-paper by drawing recollections of the donkey I was studying in the country when I was summoned to town to take my trial. I am anxious to make this public, as I now remember that I left that sheet of sketches in the court; and who can tell? Some one may yet 'invest those sketches with an almost European importance,' and the number of five pounds I shall be called upon to dole out all round will be something appalling.



"A propos of this truly great trial, the Observer remarked, in its leader upon it, that 'future treatises on the law of libel will, if properly and picturesquely indexed, be enriched with this entry, "Art critic, statement held to be a libel upon, see Toes." Indeed, the antics of the law of libel ought to be written, edited, let me suggest, by Mr. George Lewis, and illustrated by the genius of Mr. Frank Lockwood. I will supply a footnote."

Over this jeu d'esprit on my part Sala waxed very wroth, for besides having to pay L80 costs of his own, he brought upon himself columns of chaff, of which the following is a fair specimen. "The Prince of Journalists," wrote a wag of journalists, "is lamenting that he has jumped out of the Furniss into the fire, for of a surety five pounds will hardly repay Mr. Sala for the roasting he will receive from his good-natured friends." Skits showing six toes were plentiful, jokes in burlesque and on the music-hall stage were introduced as a matter of course, and private chaff in letters was kept up for some time. One private letter I wrote du Maurier, "Sala has no sole for humour—you have made me put my foot in it," and added the Six Toes signature sketch. In this no doubt du Maurier found inspiration for Trilby.



In the witness-box Mr. Sala took up a curious position with regard to that filched and fatal joke. He said that I told that joke because he had been invited to distribute the prizes at the Art School at Nottingham shortly before, and that I had run down and, like the miscreant who sowed tares in his neighbour's wheat, deliberately made him look ridiculous. As a matter of fact, I neither knew that Sala had distributed the prizes, nor that he had ever put in an appearance at Nottingham. Sala in his evidence said, "I have always been well received there (Nottingham). The people have always been very kind to me, and they expressed surprise at the libel." Nottingham people reading this, assured me it was the very reverse of the facts, that Sala was socially anything but friendly and most objectionable in his behaviour when there; and they invited me to distribute the prizes the following year, which I did—the last stage of all of this strange, eventful joke, which ended, as it began, in good-natured laughter.

* * * * *



The one confession I desire in all seriousness should reach the ears of my fellow artists is that my object in attacking the Royal Academy ("Royal Academy Antics," 1890), was a thoroughly unselfish one. "It was published for the sake of those who, for one reason or another, are not within the inner circle. I was prompted to call the discriminating attention of the public to the evil the Academy works and permits to exist," by appeals from artists outside—heartbroken men and women smarting under unfair treatment; I received letters recording cases of gross injustice, followed by ruin and poverty—which made my blood boil. The shortcomings of the Academicians had been the subject of criticism for many years, yet no improvement resulted. As the Times pathetically observed: "At least it should not be taken for granted that improvement is impossible till improvement has been attempted. This much has been forced upon us by the painful knowledge of the many bitter, often heartbreaking, disappointments which cloud the opening of the Royal Academy Exhibition, when London looks bright and blooming, and everyone and everything around seems so full of life, and so eager and capable of enjoyment. It is impossible for those whose office carries them behind the scenes, in the midst of the festive and fashionable crowd which throngs the stately rooms of the Academy, not to think of the poor lodging and the shabby studio, and the easel, the rejected picture, the subject of so much labour, the spring of so many hopes, which was expected to win bread, if not fame, for the painter." Perfectly true, but oh, how pathetic! to those, like myself, "whose office carries them behind the scenes." It is pleasant to keep friendly with those Royal Academicians and their friends and worshippers—that "festive and fashionable crowd"—and to be on good terms with the givers of banquets and the pets of Society; but I care little for such, for I am neither a logrolling journalist nor a Society-seeking artist, and at the risk of having my independence mistaken for egotism, I have always expressed my opinions openly and freely, quite regardless of, and not caring one jot for, those whose friendship I lost in consequence—no, not even as in this case, where the very artists who confessed to me, and who appealed to me to attack the Academy, subsequently avoided me, as "it wouldn't do, don't you know, to be seen with Furniss, as I am in the running for the Academy." This was my dedication.



The one object in view was to disabuse the public mind of the erroneous impression that the Royal Academy is an unprejudiced official public body, that they elect only the best artists, and reject only the unworthy—in fact, that R.A. should be considered a hall-mark on work, as too many believe it to be, to the detriment of the majority of artists. "Most of those artists who write and talk of art may be considered prejudiced—no one can well say that you are. What is the Royal Academy to you?" was said to me. I was even encouraged by some of the Academicians themselves, who had from time to time fruitlessly attempted to introduce reforms; but notwithstanding the efforts of the right-minded members of their body, the majority adopt the Fabian policy of sitting down and doing nothing, or bury their heads, ostrich-like, till the storm of indignation raised by their unworthy selfishness and indolence has blown over.

I went thoroughly into the subject. I read Blue-books, criticisms, sober, solid reviews, Royal Academicians' confessions and defence. I read everything connected with the history of the Royal Academy from beginning to end. Then I appeared on the platform and gave lectures on Art and Artists and the Royal Academy, which drew forth leading articles from the Times and nearly every paper in the land.

In my researches I found that the Royal Academy has been a narrow-minded clique from its very initiation. It was procured by the trickery of an American (its first President), West, from that "dull lad brought up by narrow-minded people," George the Third, described by Thackeray: "Like all dull men, the King was all his life suspicious of superior people. He did not like ... Reynolds.... He loved mediocrities—Benjamin West was his favourite painter."

"A royal patron on the sly secured, Which from the first its cheek to shame inured."[A]

[Footnote A: Soden's "Rap at the R.A."]

It was a contemptible pandering to unblushing and self-interested sycophancy, involving practically the ruin of all that the best spirits in the art world had laboured for since the commencement of the century. A society of unmitigated selfishness was thus started, and still continues. When everything else around has been reformed, as the country has advanced and increased, the Royal Academy remains exactly as it was when so hurriedly formed one hundred and thirty years ago.

To all this I received endless confirmation, but, alas! the writers did not give me permission to publish their names. I have on my desk before me as I write this page a letter from the editor of our most artistic illustrated weekly: "Allow me to congratulate you; keep pegging away. The Royal Academy of Arts (plural) is nonsense; it is, as you say, a Royal Academy of oil. If the R.A. had done their duty years ago, we would not see such farcical statues in the streets, nor should I (as at present moment employed) be writing to Berlin and Vienna for assistance in matters where skill and taste are required by art workmen." The President of a certain Royal Academy wrote: "I have just read your 'Royal Academy Antics,' and I must confess that, as far as I can judge, many of its strictures are deserved; ... but I can venture to say that many of the antiquated mistakes made by the parent Academy have been carefully avoided by our governing body."



From all sorts and conditions of artists and art employers I received congratulations. Those from the poor struggling outsiders alone repaid me for the trouble I had taken. At that time, only eleven years ago, the Royal Academy and other picture shows were in a very different position from what they are now. Art is no longer a fashion; proportionately the Royal Academy is going down. The glory of Lord Leighton, one of the brightest of Society's stars, attracted hosts of fashionable people to the gatherings of the Academy, and Sir John Millais, too, was much run after by the fashionable crowd. Now that these are gone, the Academy has lost all interest in smart Society. "Academy Antics up to Date" would not have any sale, "An Artistic Joke" in Bond Street would not have any visitors. I fought for the weak when they were crushed by the strong. Now that "My Lady Oil" is feeble and powerless, I desist.

"The Royal Academy has been the subject of many bitter attacks," wrote the editor of the Magazine of Art, "during the last hundred years—attacks which, directed against unjust or antiquated rules, have usually been well founded. But never, perhaps, has so effective a charge been made as that which Mr. Furniss brings in his entertaining volume; and if it be true that ridicule will pierce there whence the shafts of indignation will rebound, no little good may be looked for from the publication."



Precisely so. Others, serious and influential, had exposed the R.A.; I tried what ridicule would do. But the public did not take me seriously, and the Press took me too seriously; and as the public does not buy books on art, but is content with a rechauffe, my object to a certain extent was defeated.

My Lady Oil of Burlington House is a very selfish creature; she persistently refuses to recognise her twin-sister Water Colour, giving her but one miserable room in her mansion, and no share whatever in her honours. My Lady Oil is selfish; My Lady Oil is unjust to favour engravers and architects, and to ignore painters in water-colours and artists in black-and-white. She showers honours on her adopted sisters, Engraving and Architecture, because the former mechanically reproduces her work, and the latter builds her pretty toy-houses for her children to live in.

This is really altogether absurd when you reflect that it is in water-colour that English art excels, and that the copyist, the engraver's occupation will soon be gone, beaten away by slightly more mechanical, but more effective, modes of reproduction.

Sooner or later John Bull will open his inartistic eyes, and see that mediocrity in oil is not equal to excellence in water, and that those who originate with the pencil are far before copyists with the graver and drawers of plans.

I then advocated a National Academy, a Commonwealth of Art, presided over by a State Minister of Fine Art, in which mediocrity will find no space till a welcome and a place have been given to all earnest work, regardless of its nature.

Where the number of works of any one man will be limited, and where there will be no such mockery of good work as "rejection for want of space."

Where all the fine arts, and especially the national fine art (water-colour paintings), shall be recognised as arts, and the best of the professors of them shall at least be eligible for election.

Where the committee of selection and hanging shall be—as in the Salon—elected by the body of exhibitors.

Where reasonable time shall be given to the proper consideration of every work sent in.

Where the women, in the rare event of their being equal to their brother brushes, shall be elected into the magic circle.

Very few of the great public who find the splendid Tate Gallery "a thing of beauty and a joy for ever," recollect the disgraceful treatment the donor of it received at the hands of the Government and others. The way in which Mr.—afterwards Sir—Henry Tate was "held up to derision and contempt by a handful of irresponsible cranks" was a public scandal. Mr. Tate, in consequence, temporarily withdrew his princely offer of L150,000 to the nation. All his friends, and they were legion, deeply sympathised with him. I, being one of the few who were asked by Mr. Tate to meet at his house and consider the form of the "British Luxembourg" before the offer was made public at all, took upon myself to write to the Times as follows:—

"Red-tapeism has triumphed, and all your art-loving readers are disgusted, but not altogether surprised, to find this morning that Mr. Henry Tate has retired from the scene with his princely offer of L80,000 and his magnificent collection of pictures, which was to form the nucleus of the proposed gallery of British art. It is a bitter disappointment to the munificent Mr. Tate, and a warning to others who, like him, come forward with their purse and their pictures and offer them to an unartistic nation. It is bad enough to find that a splendid gift like this cannot be accepted; but even worse features in this lengthy controversy have been the gross personal attacks and ungenerous insinuations made against the would-be donor, which must be particularly hurtful to his modest and unobtrusive nature, and I now write to suggest that all those who sympathise with him (and surely their name is legion) should show him some public mark of their appreciation. To the British mind this at once suggests a banquet, and I would most willingly undertake all the arrangements in connection with it if my present state of health did not preclude my doing so; but, without a doubt, among Mr. Tate's countless admirers there must be many eager to adopt and carry out this suggestion."

Of course I was chaffed in the Press for so "characteristically, though gravely," suggesting such a thing. My object in making the proposal was misunderstood. I was accused of putting the crowning absurdity on the whole thing, of making a cheaply canonised martyr of Mr. Tate, and some ungenerously hinted I was following up my joke of my "offer to the nation" by another. In fact, for the first time in the history of England, a public man was not to have a public dinner when there happened to be a matter of public importance to celebrate and ventilate! On the other hand, I received a letter from Mr. Tate, from Bournemouth, the day my letter in the Times appeared, in which he thanked me for my warm hearted letter in the Times, but begged of me not to press my proposal in his honour. "As you say, I am a modest man, and it would be more than I could stand. What I should like would be to see the artists calling a public meeting and protesting against the way in which British art has been shelved." In the same letter he assured me "that too much could not be said in condemnation of Sir Frederick Leighton's and the Academicians' supineness." In writing to thank me for dropping the proposed banquet, he again referred to his great surprise and disappointment that neither Sir Frederick Leighton nor any one of the Academicians had given his scheme any support, and complained that the President of the Royal Academy had been much more loyal to his friend Lord Carlisle "than to the cause of British art."

THE OLD BAILEY.

In the winter of 1885 the following paragraph ran through the Press:—"A statement has been circulated from a quarter that may be taken as well informed, that the City Lands Committee of the Corporation of London have perfected plans for the improvement of the Central Criminal Court. It is not improbable that the process of reform has been accelerated by a recent letter to the public Press of Mr. Harry Furniss, the well-known comic artist, who, having been summoned as a juryman, suffered many woes while waiting to be called into the box." As the Saturday Review remarked, the bitter cry of the outcast juror which I uttered is familiar enough to the public ear, but I had given it a more penetrating note than usual; but it did not hesitate to say that it would not produce any more effect upon those whom I sought to influence "than the less articulate, or even than the absolutely inarticulate, protests of many generations of his fellow-sufferers." And the Saturday Review was right, for fifteen winters have passed since I wrote my protest to the Daily News.

"I cannot help thinking the prisoners at the Old Bailey have every reason to congratulate themselves they are brought there as prisoners, and not as jurymen. They are well looked after, and have a clear way into Court, and plenty of room when they get there. These are their advantages; but, alas! the lot of the poor jurymen is not such a happy one. For some reasons, which may (or may not) exist in the mind of the summoning officer, I received a demand from him to appear and perform a 'super's' part in trial by jury at the Old Bailey Petty Sessions. I arrived at the Court punctually at the hour requested, and after fighting my way through a mixture of other small ratepayers, detectives, bailed prisoners, and nondescripts, I came to the first floor. Then I entered a dark passage, 'standing room only,' and found it quite impossible to get near the Court, the outside of which resembled the entrance to Old Drury on Boxing Night. 'There ain't no room; just stand outside there!' where I managed to keep my temper and my feet for a considerable time. By degrees I squeezed into the Court with my hat and temper ruffled. I arrived at barrier No. 1. 'Have I been called?' 'Name?' 'Yes, yer 'ave, long ago; fined five pounds for not answering to your name'; explanation. Shoved on to barrier No. 2; explanation repeated. Shoved on to barrier No. 3; explanation repeated again, and reached barrier No. 4. The Judge: 'Swear'; and I swore. Final explanation; fine taken off. I have an excuse. 'Stand down!' Here I remain for an hour and a half in a pen, huddled up with more 'Hexcuses,' as Mr. Husher calls us, some of whom, by their own statement, came from houses in which there were infectious diseases. Imagine how nice this would be with the jury-box full! I must admit the presiding Judge performed his task of selection with discretion, particularly when he let me off. But I observe that before the Judge there is a bouquet of flowers. I am told that this is the survival of an old custom of placing hyssop before the Bench by way of febrifuge to protect him from pestilential vapours from the dock. I would like to suggest that a bunch of hyssop be again substituted for the bouquet of flowers. In justice, I ask you this: Is it reasonable to fine an over-taxed ratepayer five pounds for not having heard his name through a musty brick wall? And may I through you make a proposal—that busy professional men should be exempt from this annoyance on payment of one guinea per annum, and that this fund should either be employed in building a new court, or provide fees for a really competent jury of junior barristers, who undoubtedly would be the right men in the right place?"

My "cry" was taken up by the Press. "Purgatory is no name for it," "The Old Bailey Scandal," and other startling headlines failed to move Bumbledom. The most celebrated Criminal Court in the world, situated in the richest city, to this day remains a public scandal and a purgatory to unfortunate jurymen. My suggestion in this "amusing jeremiad," as it was called by one paper, contained one serious proposal; but my protest against the only form of conscription known to our laws, and my suggestion that the jury should be paid junior barristers, was, I confess, the only humorous idea I had in writing the letter! The major portion was serious—so again I have been a victim to the want of humour on the part of my journalistic friends.



Mr. Punch appeared as my "champion stout and warm" in a series of verses, a few of which I quote:

"That citizen is now in Court, a dismal den and dusty; Frowsy and foul its fittings be, its atmosphere is fusty; And oh, its minor myrmidons are proud and passing crusty!

"They chivy him, that citizen, hustle him here and there; One elbow looseth his trim tie, one rumpleth his back hair: They greet his queries with a grunt, his grumblings with a stare.

"A close-packed crowd doth hem him round, a tight, malodorous 'block' Of fustian men and women gross, of dry and dusty lock; His 'By your leaves' they heed no whit, his struggles wild they mock.

"He may not stir, he cannot see. At length, in tones of blame, He hears them toss from lip to lip his own much-honoured name: 'What! Fined for absence!!! That be blowed!' He swells with wrath and shame.

"And through the throng he madly thrusts, like Viking, through the press Strewing his path with buttons burst and fragments of his dress, Claiming reversal of that fine with dearly-bought success.

* * * * *

"How long, oh British citizens, will ye in patience bide The torture of the Jury-box remorselessly applied, The Usher's haughty insolence, the Bobby's baleful pride?

"How long shall the 'twelve honest men,' our constitution's end, Be treated worse than criminals, their time and money lend, Long hours of thankless horror in their country's cause to spend?

"Punch riseth in indignant wrath, your champion stout and warm: 'Tis time that Somebody should take this old abuse by storm, And sweep out the Old Bailey with the besom of Reform."



I have to confess that letters to the Press have, as a rule, little effect in reforming; in fact, my only direct success was caused by an illustrated letter to Punch. The tent-jobbers were evicted, and the pleasant and not altogether picturesque pavilion for cricketers, in the centre of Regent's Park, was erected in consequence of this letter of mine to Punch:

"DEAR MR. Punch,—I have discovered a nasty spot in one of the lungs of London. As you are the Doctor to cure all evils, I trust you will take up the case.

"I re-visited the neighbourhood of dear old Regent's Park last week. I strolled through the Zoo to renew the acquaintance of all my friends there, deserted in the 'Out of Town' season, and longing in vain, alas! for their day in the country. It was early; the Park was deserted, except by the birds, and here and there laughing children with their nurses. Everything was pleasant, so fresh and green, and free and easy, unlike the West End 'lungs.'

"I sat myself down on a bench. Shut out from the madding crowd, one could breathe in comfort. I recalled Locker's lines in praise of Piccadilly—that crowded thoroughfare, dusty and noisy—and while trying to fit them in to suit the beautiful scene around me, I nodded, and fell asleep.

* * * * *

"Bang! I'm awake! What's that? A cannon-ball hit me in the back? I'm all of a heap on the grass, my hat one way, my umbrella another—and I nowhere! or, where am I? Dear me, am I dreaming? Have I been carried by a shot? (Volunteers do practise in the Park.) Was it a suburban race-meeting? Yes, it must be, and one of a low order. And yet this is surely Regent's Park!



"'Thank you, sir!'—'Thank y-o-o-u!'—'Th-a-n-k y-o-o-o-u!'"

I pick myself up. Is it the monkeys' half-holiday? Yes! They are imitating boys playing cricket. Their cages are close at hand.

"Bang! Another blow!! This time I receive the enemy's blow—as an Englishman should—in front. It brings me up standing—I see it all! The monkeys are boys; the cages are practising nets; and the balls come off the bats! A nurse in charge of five children is under fire—in terror that some of her little ones may be hit and killed—and it is a wonder they are not. I gallantly cover her retreat, for no park-keeper is to be seen. Then I turned my attention to what I thought—when half-dazed, but not altogether wrong—was a corner of a low race-meeting, or gipsy encampment. Here is a sketch, sir, made on the spot. It certainly was like both—dirty unfinished tents, casks, rubbish and rags, something boiling, and some people brawling, the grass all worn, and the walk cut up! An eyesore, a disgrace, sir!

"A somewhat artistically-built kiosk stands a hundred yards or so away. If the mass of cricketers want another, by all means let them have it, and drive the unsightly tent-jobbers out of the Park.

"If this sort of thing is allowed by officials in charge, then, sir, I venture to think the sketch heading this letter, 'What it will come to,' will be an actual illustration of fact.

"Yours truly, "STURMIE STUMPS."

Unfortunately my more recent attack on "Lord's," and my letters and articles on various other public matters, have not met with the same success. Even domestic annoyances have been ventilated by me, and I fondly hope have had some effect.

A propos of the foregoing, I may here make full confession of how

I FOUND A SNAKE IN REGENT'S PARK.

The following incident may prove interesting to the public in general and naturalists in particular:

While taking an early walk in Regent's Park on Saturday, June 12th, 1894, I captured, not the proverbial worm, but a specimen of a rare species of snake, which was indulging in a constitutional on one of the broad paths. "What a gigantic worm!" was my first thought, but on my using my stick to arrest its further progress it rose in the orthodox snake-like fashion at my cane, throwing itself into an attitude of defence and hissing with anger. The park-keeper, park-labourers who were mowing the grass close by, and divers members of the British public, from the piscatorial street arab with his minnow-ensnaring thread and bent pin to the portly merchant wending Citywards, were soon on the spot, and really that diminutive reptile caused more consternation than would have been the case had it been instead an Anarchist bomb. I sent over to the cricket pavilion for a tin canister wherein to cage pro tem. the wily stranger, and excitement waxed high as preparations were made to accomplish the fearsome feat. This was safely managed by the aid of a newspaper, which naturally enough, considering the events of the week, proved to be of a sporting character, and the viper, probably anxious as to the result of the Oaks, glided to the column containing that news, whence it was expeditiously shaken into the canister, which I perforated at the top, and walked off with my tinned snake to the Zoological Gardens hard by, where its roaming propensities were kept in check within the walls of the reptile house.

I was somewhat startled to learn that my captive had not escaped from the Gardens, which did not contain one of its species, and Mr. Bartlett gave it as his opinion that there must have been a number more wherever this one came from. This new danger further enhanced the charms of Regent's Park, which on Saturdays is a perfect pandemonium, the pedestrian having to exert a great deal of agility to dodge the whizzing cricket balls and avoid being maimed for life. Now that we have had snakes in the grass we may expect vultures in the air, and who knows that in time to come we may not be shooting big game in the jungles of the north-west!

The above is the substance of a letter I wrote to the Times, the publication of which caused no little consternation in some papers and no little chaff, at my expense, in others. The London evening papers appeared with startling contents bills and sensational headings:

"LIKA-JOKO, THE SERPENT HUNTER."

"SNAKES IN REGENTS PARK!"

"THE TALE OF THE SERPENT," "SNAKES ALIVE!" &c.

The Westminster Gazette, "In the hope of gleaning some valuable information about this newly-discovered fearful reptile which lies in wait for wayfarers in the wilds of Northern London," sent a representative post-haste to interview Mr. Bartlett, the superintendent of the Zoological Gardens. This report in the Westminster is headed:

"He thought he saw an elephant Upon the mantelpiece; He looked again, and found it was His sister's husband's niece,"

and then proceeds to throw doubt upon my veracity.



"Mr. Harry Furniss has been suffering from a delusion very similar to that of the subject of Mr. Lewis Carroll's nonsense-verse. Mr. Bartlett is a man of few words, though what he does say is both interesting and humorous. Without replying"—(the Westminster representative required him to tell him all he knew about my snake)—"he took up his pen and, on the back of a visiting-card which lay before him, he drew a circle as large as the card would hold, the ends of which did not quite meet. 'There,' he said, 'that is about the actual size of Mr. Harry Furniss's snake. You see its size is not alarming, and its nature is not venomous. In fact, it is absolutely harmless.'

"'But it is of rare variety, is it not?'

"'The variety is not common, certainly, though I have known it for the last eighteen or twenty years. It is known as the small crowned snake (Coronella laevis), and is occasionally found in Hampshire and in one or two other counties. The first specimen I had was brought to me from Hampshire by a friend of mine, a young officer. As he pulled it out of his hand-bag in this room I saw it biting at his fingers. I thought it was a viper; but, of course, on examining it I soon saw what it really was. It has no fangs, and it is, as I said, quite harmless. At its full size it may measure from fourteen to sixteen inches. As for its rarity, here is a fairly long list of the specimens we have had, and we have several at present. But come along to the reptile house and see it for yourself.'

"Arrived, at the reptile house, Mr. Bartlett called the keeper, and in solemn tones and with a grave countenance requested him to 'show this gentleman Mr. Harry Furniss's serpent.' The man looked puzzled for a moment, and then gradually a broad grin spread over his face as he replied: 'Oh, yes, sir, if I can find it, but I am not sure about that,' However, he removed the lid from a glass case containing several lively little creatures just about as large as a fresh-water eel at the age at which it is known to the small boy who tries to catch it in his hands as the 'darning needle.' After groping about in the sand at the bottom of the case he found the specimen required and handed it over to Mr. Bartlett, who held it in his hand and allowed it to make savage darts at his fingers. 'You see,' he said, it is a lively little thing—extremely spiteful, but quite powerless to hurt me.' After it had been put back and carefully secured, lest it should make another descent upon London, Mr. Bartlett gave his theories as to how it might have got into Regent's Park. 'There are two ways in which it might have come here,' he explained. 'I imagine it has been brought in some of the plants or shrubs which have been provided for the Park gardeners; or else somebody may have brought a female with young ones from the country and carelessly allowed this one to escape. But stray animals like this are almost sure to come to us sooner or later. Whenever people find anything unusual, they think it must be an escaped specimen and forward it here. Why, when the great explosion on the canal occurred in 1874, the glass in our aviaries was shattered. Of course a great number of our birds escaped, but it was in November, and most of them were glad enough to return to the warmth and to the food provided for them. But people were continually sending us birds for a long time, and, in fact, more birds were sent here than had actually escaped.'

"'Then, as a last question, Mr. Bartlett, what does the fuss which has been made about this snake mean?'

"Mr. Bartlett looked more solemn than ever as he suggested: 'Well, Mr. Harry Furniss is fond of a joke—Lika-Joko is a capital name for him; he may have been serious, or he may not."

I was serious, and so was dear old Mr. Bartlett, whom it was my privilege to know well, but he did not let the representative of the Westminster see this.

I replied to the above article:

"On reading your descriptive interview with Mr. Bartlett a propos of my finding a reptile in Regent's Park, I was, believe me, far more surprised than when I captured the primary cause of your representative's journey to the Zoological Gardens. You endeavour to sum up the incident and my veracity by quoting the following lines of Mr. Lewis Carroll's:—