The Gentle Art of Making Enemies Part 19

My invention and machinery, by the way, these warm-hearted people believe to be something after the fas.h.i.+on of their own sluice-boxes--and I dare not undeceive them.

Atlas, _je te la souhaite bonne et heureuse_!

ST. IVES, CORNWALL, Dec. 27.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

_The Easy Expert_

Atlas--They have sent me the _Spectator_--a paper upon which our late 'Arry lingered to the last as art critic. In its columns I find a correspondent calling aloud for our kind intervention. Present me, brave Atlas, to the editor, that I may say to him:

[Sidenote: _The World_, Jan. 30, 1884.]

"GOOD SIR,--'Your Reviewer' is doubtless my unburied 'Arry. Why, then, should 'his mistaking a photogravure reproduction of a pen-and-ink drawing by Samuel Palmer for a finished etching by the same hand'

seem, 'to say the least of it, astounding'?

"Not at all! By this sort of thing was he known among us, poor chap--and so was he our fresh gladness and continued surprise."

"Did I not make historical his enchanting encounter with Mr.

Herkomer's water-colour drawing of Mr. Ruskin at the Grosvenor, which he described as the 'first oil portrait we have of the great master'?

Amazing that, if you like!

"Do not all remember how we leaped for joy at the reading of it?"

"Even Atlas himself laughed aloud, and, handicapped as he is with the World, and weighted with wisdom, danced upon his plinth, a slow measure of reckless acquiescence, as I set down in the chronicles of all time that 'Arry, 'unable, by mere sense of smell, to distinguish between oil and water-colour, might at least have inquired; and that either the fireman or the guardian in the Gallery could have told him not to blunder in the _Times_.'"

"But no, he never would ask--he liked his potshots at things; it used to give a sort of sporting interest to his speculations upon pictures.

And so he was ever obstinate--or any one at the Fine Art Society would have told him the difference between an etching and a photograph.--I am, good sir, yours, etc."

Atlas, _a bientot_.

ST. IVES, CORNWALL, Jan. 25, 1834.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

_Propositions--No. 2_

A picture is finished when all trace of the means used to bring about the end has disappeared.

To say of a picture, as is often said in its praise, that it shows great and earnest labour, is to say that it is incomplete and unfit for view.

Industry in Art is a necessity--not a virtue--and any evidence of the same, in the production, is a blemish, not a quality; a proof, not of achievement, but of absolutely insufficient work, for work alone will efface the footsteps of work.

The work of the master reeks not of the sweat of the brow--suggests no effort--and is finished from its beginning.

The completed task of perseverance only, has never been begun, and will remain unfinished to eternity--a monument of goodwill and foolishness.

"There is one that laboureth, and taketh pains, and maketh haste, and is so much the more behind."

The masterpiece should appear as the flower to the painter--perfect in its bud as in its bloom--with no reason to explain its presence--no mission to fulfil--a joy to the artist--a delusion to the philanthropist--a puzzle to the botanist--an accident of sentiment and alliteration to the literary man.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

_A Hint_

[Sidenote: _The World_, Feb. 17, 1886.]

Please to take note, my dear Mr. James McN. W., that your "dearest foe," 'Arry, is a candidate for the Slade Chair of Art in the University of Cambridge! This is said to be the age of testimonials. A few words from you, my dear James, addressed to the distinguished trustees, could not fail to give 'Arry a lift.

ATLAS.

_A Distinction_

Atlas, you provoke me! The wisdom of ages means but little--I have said it. _Faut etre "dans le mouvement,"_ you dear old thing, or you are absolutely out of it!

[Sidenote: _The World_, Feb. 24, 1886.]

You are misled, and mistake mere fact for the fiction of history, which is truth--and instructs--and is beautiful.

Now, in truth, 'Arry is dead--very dead.

Did I not, from between your shoulders, sally forth and slay him?--thereby instructing--and making history--and avenging the beautiful.

If within the distant Aden, you can't descry, "with sorrow laden,"

the tiny soul of 'Arry, it is because you no longer read your own small print, my Atlas! and the microbes of Eternity escape you.

Moreover, are not these things written in the chronicles of Chelsea, adown whose Embankment I still, Achilles-like, do drag the body of an afternoon?

This practice has doubtless completed the confusion of the wearied ones of Slade--and they of the Schools, accustomed to the culture of Colvin, whose polished scalp I with difficulty collected, ceasing to distinguish between the quick and the dead, will probably prop up our late 'Arry as professor, long to remain undetected in the Chair!

Atlas, _tais-toi!_--Let us not interfere!