Chapter XII: Art Journalism

My connection with the Grosvenor Gallery was due, in the first instance, to a series of articles upon the reform of the Royal Academy published by me in the columns of the _Pall Mall Gazette_. These papers had attracted the attention of Sir Charles Dilke, who based upon them a motion brought forward in the House of Commons, which, however, had no practical result.

They had also been seen by Sir Coutts Lindsay and Mr. Hallé, and these gentlemen invited me to associate myself with them in the future conduct of the Grosvenor. This new vocation, however, in no way interrupted my career as an Art Critic. Already established on the _Pall Mall Gazette_, I began at the same time to widen the range of my writings on the subject of art, and in this way, at the invitation of Mr. Samuel Carter Hall, became a regular contributor to the _Art Journal_. At the same time I was offered and accepted the post of Art Critic on the _Manchester Guardian_, and in the year 1875 I was appointed as the English editor of _L’Art_, a periodical so luxuriously produced that it could not be destined ever to win a very large public.

Mr. S. C. Hall was a quaint and curious figure of the time, whose acquaintance never ceased to afford me a certain humorous enjoyment. He was supposed to be the model upon which Dickens has based his superb creation of Mr. Pecksniff, and there were points in his character which readily lent themselves for exploitation at the hands of such a master of humour.

For a time our relations on the _Art Journal_ were friendly and undisturbed, and Mr. Hall was good enough to express in unstinted terms his appreciation of my work. But it was impossible, even at that time, in personal converse with the man, not to be haunted by the suspicion that his constant assertion of the most ideal aims in life were consistent with an occasional reference to more mundane considerations.

Both he and Mrs. Hall must have sometimes laid themselves open to the charge of taking themselves too seriously, for I remember Edmund Yates telling me that he had once asked Charles Dickens whether he thought they were ever conscious of playing a part, to which Dickens had replied, “I think once a year they exchange a wink, possibly on Carter’s birthday.”

Purnell used to relate an anecdote of the gravity of their entertainments having once been broken up by an unintentional flash of humour on the part of Mrs. Hall herself. At one end of the dinner-table Mr. Hall, in his most solemn tones, was announcing to the company his unswerving faith in a future life, and in conclusion expressed the hope that in that other and happier world he should rejoin his dear wife; upon which Mrs. Hall, from her place at the end of the board, interjected, in strong Irish accents, the somewhat disconcerting answer, “No, Carter; I shall go to Jesus.”

Mr. Hall’s appearance, with his wealth of white hair and dark eyebrows, seemed to give a certain stamp of authority to the unctuous platitudes in which he was wont to indulge. He used constantly to say to me, “My object, my dear sir, is to do as much good in the world as I can,” and in such utterances as this there was never, I am sure, even the lurking suspicion on his part that he was exposing himself to the shafts of ridicule.

I remember one evening the subject of spiritualism was under discussion, and Mr. Hall was avowing his confident faith in the reality of messages from another world to which he confessed that he himself in his writing was particularly indebted.

“On these occasions,” he said, “when I have written something which I have deemed to be particularly inspired, I have often turned round to the spirit whom I knew to be at my side, and have said with fervid gratitude, ‘Thank you, my dear sir; thank you.’”

It was only upon longer acquaintance I discovered that the air of venerable piety, which never deserted him in social intercourse, was consistent with a very shrewd appreciation of commercial success. Little by little I found the sanctity of his manner sometimes giving way to very pointed suggestions that the mercantile interest of the Journal must not be wholly sacrificed to my independent views upon Art.

At first these suggestions were only tentatively put forward, and always with an elaborate deference to my better judgment as a critic, but day by day they became more encroaching, until at last the conviction was forced upon me that the columns under my charge were intended to serve as a useful support to the advertisement department of the Journal. After a while these constant interferences became so galling and exasperating to me that I determined to break our connection, and in a letter, which I strove to make polite but which I intended to be deeply sarcastic, I ventured to hint that as the criticism I was called upon to write was now required to take so entirely the colour of an advertisement, I thought it would be better that it should pass directly into the hands of the manager of the advertisement department.

I confess I thought my letter would provoke an explosion of indignant protest, but in this I was sadly disappointed; for all response I got only a honeyed little note of acknowledgment, which, as far as I can remember, ran in these terms:--“I hasten to acknowledge with many thanks your courteous letter. So much I feel compelled to say, more than this I will not say.”

The old gentleman’s unflinching urbanity had stood him in good stead, and even Whistler himself, had he been confronted with such a letter, could hardly have found the means to continue the controversy.

While I was still associated with the _Art Journal_ I had become also a contributor to the _Portfolio_, then under the editorship of Mr. Philip Hamerton, who is best known to the world by his book upon Etching, and his studies of that part of rural France in which he usually resided. And a little later I also wrote upon Art matters in the columns of the _Academy_.

These several engagements, combined with the work that I had to do for the _Manchester Guardian_, made the annual occasions of the opening of the Spring Exhibitions a specially busy time for me.

I remember one Sunday morning in May, when I had sat up very far into the night completing my opening article for the _Guardian_, my servant awakened me with the intelligence that a young gentleman was in the drawing-room waiting to see me. He did not give his name, as he told her that it would be unknown to me; but he had arrived only the previous evening, as he said, from New York, and was the bearer of several messages from friends there which he was anxious to deliver before his departure for the Continent later in the day.

On the night before he had sailed, he said--and this was his excuse for intruding upon me,--he had supped with some of the artists best known on the other side, and amongst them he specially introduced the names of Frank Millet and Edwin Abbey, who, as he said, had drawn from him the promise that he would on no account quit London without having shaken me by the hand.

He was so graceful in his apologies for this early intrusion that my first irritation was quickly allayed, and the warm reference to myself, of which he assured me he was the bearer, must, I suppose, have touched my vanity, for I at once invited him to be my guest at dinner that evening that we might talk more at leisure and at length of the fortunes of our common friends on the other side.

This, alas, he explained, was impossible.

Was there nothing, then, I could do for him? Nothing! And then with renewed apologies he rose to go; but at the door he turned as though a sudden thought had come into his mind. Yes, he had just remembered! There was a trifling service I could render him, and then, before he mentioned its nature, he again ran over the names of “the boys,” as he described them, with whom he had parted on the eve of sailing. Perfect artist as he had proved himself to be, he blundered at the last; for to the list, as he now recounted it, he added the name of Alfred Parsons, who had indeed been in America, but who had long ago returned, and whom it chanced I had seen at the Arts Club the day before.

All unconscious, however, that this mistake had aroused my suspicions, he proceeded to describe what he termed the ludicrous position in which he found himself. He was about to start on a tour round the world, but by some absurd mistake the remittances from his home in Western America had gone one way, while he had gone the other. And this petty contretemps he aptly illustrated in pantomime by indicating the course of his remittances with his right hand and his own journey with his left, crossing them on his breast as though to suggest the passing of ships in the night. And then finally, in the lightest and airiest of tones, came the announcement of a modest request that I should cash him a cheque for £50.

Affecting to ignore the financial aspect which our brief acquaintance had suddenly assumed, I carelessly let fall the remark that I had seen Mr. Alfred Parsons yesterday at the Arts Club, to which I added the suggestion that he might deem it convenient under the circumstances to quit the house.

His bright candid eyes met mine for an instant, and then, as though by a flash of lightning, he was down the stairs and in the street.

I think it must have been this same young gentleman who only a year or two later visited Irving at the Lyceum Theatre during the rehearsal of one of his plays. In that case he represented himself as the nephew of Mr. Child, a friend of Irving’s who had recently set up a monument at Stratford-on-Avon; but in substance the story was the same. There also he sought nothing but the pleasure of shaking Irving by the hand, and it was only at the moment of parting that he asked for a letter of introduction to the Mayor of Stratford, that he might not appear quite a stranger in the town whither he was bound in order to inspect his uncle’s gift.

But in this case he was more successful, for that coveted £50, which my niggard spirit had denied him, he managed, upon the strength of Irving’s letter, to extract from Stratford’s Mayor. From him he received another letter of introduction to Mr. Chamberlain, but here, as I am glad to think, with no damaging financial result. It is only fair to add, as a finish to this brief and interesting episode of an enterprising adventurer, that Mr. Child, indignant of the use that had been made of his name, afterwards insisted upon repaying the amount that had been nefariously borrowed.

My work for the _Manchester Guardian_ sometimes took me far afield, and in the year 1882, when the city of Manchester was contemplating a reconstitution of its permanent Art Gallery, I went, at their request, on a tour of inspection of the museums and schools of France. These articles were afterwards gathered into a little volume, which was subsequently translated into French and published in Paris, under the title of _L’Art en Province_.

I started in the earlier days of July, and the trains between London and Paris were already thronged with tourists on their way to Switzerland, and I remember that my journey was brightened at this earlier stage by an incident, illustrating, in an amusing way, certain characteristics of the Scottish nature.

Two youthful representatives of the race were seated in a compartment of a corridor carriage adjoining my own, and in the compartment beyond them were three or four young ladies travelling alone.

We had not gone very far from Calais, perhaps some twenty miles or more, when the train was brought to a sudden stop, and looking out of the window I saw several officials of the railway running up and down the permanent way in evident surprise and alarm.

Suddenly their attention was concentrated upon the Scotsmen’s compartment, where the indicator thrust out from the side of the carriage betokened that the alarm-bell had been sounded by them. A swift altercation, the purport of which I scarcely gathered, ended in the peremptory demand on the part of the officials for the surrender of the travellers’ tickets, combined with a menacing intimation that the matter would be further investigated on our arrival at Amiens.

At Amiens it seemed as though all the staff of the Nord were gathered upon the platform, and the force of this official affray was concentrated upon the compartment occupied by the two sturdy travellers from the North. With scant ceremony these gentlemen were commanded to descend from the carriage amid a fierce war of words, in which I fancy neither party had the smallest understanding of what was uttered by the other.

Alighting from my own compartment, I caught, rising above the angry objurgations of the French officials, the repeated assurances of the Scotsmen that they admitted their fault, and were eager to apologise for its consequences.

“I admit that I did it,” said the elder of the two, with a broad Scotch accent, “and I am sorry.”

But this reiterated expression of guilt and regret only seemed to incense the Frenchmen the more, until, in his despair, the Scotsman turned to me and in tones of almost pitiful entreaty inquired if I could speak a little French. On my replying in the affirmative, he supplied me with an explanation of his conduct, which he begged me to translate for the benefit of the _chef de gare_.

“Will you tell them,” he replied, “that we admit we did it, and are sorry, but it occurred in this way? On entering the compartment my friend and I observed that there were two small windows connected with the adjoining carriage, where, as we happened to know, a party of ladies were seated, and more for their sake than ours,” he continued, “and with a view to securing the privacy which we knew they would desire, my friend and I thought that we would pull down the blinds over these windows, and so leave the ladies in the full assurance that they were unobserved. But when I pulled the ring in the small window nearest to me the blind did not come down, and then my friend tried, with the same result, and then I said, ‘Maybe if we both pull together it will be better.’ And so we both pulled together, and yet the blind did not come down, but the train stopped, and we are sorry.”

These poor gentlemen had been totally unaware that the rings at which they had been tugging so vigorously were attached to no blinds, but directly communicated with the guard of the train. They were, in fact, the alarm-signals which had brought us to so sudden a halt outside Calais.

This was the story which he implored me to relate to the _chef de gare_ and his assembled subordinates, and I shall not easily forget the mingled incredulity and amusement with which my narrative was received.

Thinking to heighten its effect in still further excuse for what had happened, I explained to the official that in Scotland, especially in the North, women preserved a seclusion which was almost Oriental, and I then detailed, word for word, the defence of their conduct as the Scotsman had confided it to me, and when I came to that part of the narrative upon which he had particularly insisted, that it was more for the ladies’ sake than their own that they had endeavoured to secure complete privacy between the two compartments, the Gallic merriment, breaking through all official reserve, knew no bounds.

“Mais, monsieur, ce n’est pas possible? Ce n’est pas vrai?”

“Monsieur, parole d’honneur, c’est bien vrai.”

And at last, official indignation appeased by what appeared to them to be the irresistible humour of the situation, the _chef de gare_ turned to the unfortunate malefactors and said, “Eh bien, messieurs, montez donc, montez donc,” and turning to the guard of the train added, “Rendez les billets a ces messieurs,” and so, amid a ripple of laughter that ran down the platform, the incident closed, and the train proceeded on its way. But within little less than an hour afterwards, when I, in my lonely compartment, had sunk into a comfortable sleep, I felt a touch upon my shoulder, and opening my eyes saw the Scotsman bending above me.

I feared some new trouble, and inquired if there was anything more I could do.

“Nothing,” replied he; “but my friend and I feel we are deeply indebted to you.”

Politely I assured him that the little service I had been able to render him might count for nothing.

“Ay,” he answered, “but we’re very conscious it counts for a good deal, for we have been thinking it over, and we very well perceive that it might have cost us as much as ten pounds,” and so with renewed thanks he left me.

Reaching Paris, I gave my bag to a porter, and was hurrying along the platform when I heard the pattering of feet in swift pursuit. I turned, and there was my Scotsman again.

“See here,” he cried, “I had meant to ask you, but forgot. Will you tell me, where did you learn your French?”

It had suddenly dawned upon him, after the painful crisis he had gone through, that there were junctures in life in which the use of a foreign tongue might be of practical service; and I have no doubt, with the indomitable persistence which forms part of the national character, he is even now in some Northern home struggling with the difficulties of the French language.

Yet, apart from the merest smattering obtained at school, my later acquaintance with the tongue came about in a curious way. In 1870 I made the acquaintance of a Monsieur Gauthiot, a dear friend of many years, who had just then, by reason of the bitter spirit aroused by the Franco-German War, been driven from Berlin, where he had occupied the post of Professor of French Literature. For a while he took refuge in London, whence be contributed occasional articles to the _Débâts_. And here it was, when we came to know one another, that we agreed to dine together twice a week, so that on one evening we should talk English, and on the other that he should instruct me in French.

Our meetings used to take place at the Café Royal in Regent Street, then a sufficiently humble restaurant chiefly patronised by foreigners. In cost assuredly, and perhaps in excellence of cuisine, the Café Royal of that day was far removed from the stately establishment which has since won so wide a popularity.

But they were pleasant evenings which Gauthiot and I passed there together, sometimes, when our mutual instruction was over, ending in a friendly bout of dominoes, and indeed, if his natural preference for French cooking had not led us there, it is hard to say where else in London we could have found a congenial place of meeting.

Restaurants in those days were few--Verrey’s, which survives, Simpson’s in the Strand, and the old Mitre Tavern by Temple Bar, were the only houses of note that I can recall. A year or two later an attempt was made to do something on more sumptuous lines by the establishment of the Pall Mall Restaurant on the island site adjoining Trafalgar Square, but it failed for lack of patronage, for the days when dining out was to become fashionable had not arrived.

In 1883, when Messrs. Macmillan contemplated the establishment of the _English Illustrated Magazine_, they invited me to become its editor, and the three years during which I conducted this publication constituted my last important association with Art Journalism.

It was our purpose to compete in quality of illustration with the established periodicals of the United States, the excellence of whose woodcuts was attracting deserved attention in England, and I am glad to think that in these earlier years of the Magazine’s life, enough was accomplished both in Literature and Art to prove that the project might, under happier conditions, have been carried to a successful issue. But, owing to influences which lay beyond our power to control, it chanced that the experiment was undertaken at an unfortunate hour.

The art of the wood-engraver was already suffering through competition with those mechanical processes of reproduction by which it is now almost entirely destroyed. And it soon became evident that the more careful work we were trying to present could not compete in popular acceptance with those rougher and readier methods which, by reason of their greater economy, were already widely employed. And yet it must always be, I think, a matter for regret that this beautiful art of the wood-engraver should be doomed to annihilation. I have tried to show in a separate chapter how great a part it played in that renaissance of Art in England which is associated with the pre-Raphaelite movement, and I am proud to think that some of the best of its later examples found their way into the _English Illustrated Magazine_ during the period of my editorship.

On the literary side the Magazine could boast, during those earlier years, of contributions from men already famous, or who have since won their way to fame. Among the poets, Meredith and Swinburne were repeated contributors to its pages; and from a throng of distinguished writers in various fields I may cite the names of Professor Huxley, Henry James, Marion Crawford, Bret Harte, Lawrence Oliphant, Stanley Weyman, Theodore Watts-Dunton, and Richard Jefferies.

It was during the progress, through the pages of the Magazine, of his captivating story, _The House of the Wolf_, that Weyman asked my judgment on a little play he had written, and I wrote him in response a long letter pointing out what I thought to be its defects, and setting forth the reasons why, as I believed, it could scarcely, as it stood, be expected to achieve a success on the stage.

Mr. Weyman was at that time only on the threshold of his reputation as a novelist, and I remember that my sister--who was reading for me some of the many proffered contributions to the Magazine--most strongly urged me very carefully to consider the claims of _The House of the Wolf_.

A swift perusal of the story left me in no doubt as to its merits, and its warm acceptance at the hands of the readers of the Magazine amply confirmed my judgment; and yet it is strange, as illustrating how widely divergent opinions may be on matters of taste, that the story, on nearing its conclusion, was submitted to the publishers’ reader, with the idea of its being issued by them in book form, and that his unfavourable judgment left Messrs. Macmillan with no alternative but to decline the volume.

Needless to say, it was quickly accepted on my recommendation in another quarter, but by the break in our association which this incident occasioned, it chanced that I saw little of Mr. Weyman for some years to come. It was only when I had terminated my connection with the Magazine, and when I was occupied in the management of the Comedy Theatre, that a play was submitted to me by the foremost literary agent of the time, who said that he would not disclose the author’s name until its claims had been considered, but that he might mention that he was one of the most popular novelists of the day.

I was quite unconscious that I had seen the play before, and with this strong recommendation I gave it the most careful attention, and wrote to the agent a long letter setting forth what I considered to be its defects from the point of view of the stage. As I felt bound to decline the play, I did not feel justified in making further inquiry as to its authorship, and it was not until long afterwards that I had a visit from Mr. Weyman, who produced from his pocket two letters which, he said, he thought I should be interested to see. They were my own two letters, written at widely different dates, upon this very play, and it was certainly, as he pointed out, a curious testimony to the constancy of my judgment that they absolutely agreed in opinion, and were in some instances almost identical in phrase.

Strange and amusing experiences sometimes come to editors, especially to an editor of an illustrated magazine. I remember that Mr. Walter Crane had designed some very beautiful decorative work enshrining some poems of his own, and in several of the pages nude figures had been introduced, but treated in so ideal and imaginative a spirit that it seemed impossible they could provoke a protest even from an early Puritan; and yet immediately after their publication I received a letter of passionate rebuke from a reader of the Magazine dwelling in the suburbs, who with scathing criticism, obviously inspired by the loftiest moral indignation, recommended me, if I wished to study my own vile form, to look in the glass, and not, by giving such indecent pictures to the world, to pollute the purity of the reader’s home.

The letter, I think, was dated from the Old Kent Road, and the only pleasure I could draw from it rested on the fact that my Magazine was entertained in so unsuspected a quarter.

But it was not only from the humble homes of virtue that such criticism proceeded. While Hugh Conway’s story, _The Family Affair_, was running through the pages of the _English Illustrated_, I one day received a letter from the wife of an eminent judge, who told me that she could no longer permit the Magazine to lie upon her table, where it might at any time be read by her unmarried daughters.

It had been part of the author’s scheme that, during the initial stages of the story, some doubt should remain in the reader’s mind as to the legitimacy of a foundling child whom the heroine had taken under her care, and it was this suspended uncertainty which had so sorely troubled the soul of the judge’s wife.

She felt confident, as she was good enough to assure me, that the doubt would be cleared up in the end, and that the cause of morality and decorum would be ultimately vindicated, but she found it nevertheless intolerable that the innocent minds of her daughters should be haunted, even for a season, by so questionable a problem.

I never realised till I occupied the editorial chair how many people there are whose insanity takes a Shakespearian form. There was, I think, never a week passed without the reception of one or more articles intended to elucidate the authorship of the plays; and although the readers were by no means in entire agreement in ascribing them to Bacon, they were absolutely unanimous in the belief that the claims of Shakespeare were wholly and ludicrously inadmissible.

It is pleasant, however, to reflect that an editor’s duties yield many happier experiences, and bring him into contact with men and women whom otherwise it might not be his good fortune to know. It was in this way that I made the acquaintance of poor Richard Jefferies, whose delightful articles, under the heading of “The Game-keeper at Home,” had been already published in the _Pall Mall Gazette_. Jefferies’s appearance, even at our first meeting, gave me the unhappy impression that he was not destined for a long life. But despite his nervous temperament that was evidently in a large measure dependent upon the frailty of his physical constitution, he was a man of great simplicity and charm of manner.

The love that he had for the things of outward nature was clearly a passionate possession that absorbed his life. Of the teeming life of the country, from the waving ears of corn down to the minutest flower or the smallest insect that inhabited the shadowed world at their feet, he was a loving and constant observer whose eyes never wearied in their task. With Jefferies the enjoyment begotten of this watchful brooding over the things of the country was, I think, all-sufficing. He seemed never desirous to link it in association with any more directly human impulse or emotion, and in this way his writings, as it seems to me, make a separate claim, distinct from that of any other author, whether in poetry or in prose, who have confessed a like passion for the beauty of the outward world.

I was fortunate in securing several very beautiful contributions from his pen, some of which gained an added interest from the delightful illustrations of Mr. Alfred Parsons, who found himself in full sympathy with Jefferies’s purposes and design. At a later date Jefferies was associated in the same way with my friend Mr. North, whose delicate drawings showed a quick sympathy with the mood of the writer; and I know that Jefferies highly appreciated the gentle hospitality which Mr. North afforded him in the later days of his declining health.

Another figure which comes back to me among the vivid memories of those editorial days is that of Mr. Lawrence Oliphant--surely one of the strangest, most gifted, and fascinating characters of the time in which his chequered career was passed. No one who met Oliphant could be insensible to his charms, and yet, as one sat in the man’s presence, it was always with a feeling of wonder and amazement at the many vicissitudes of his life.

I knew him personally only towards the close of his career, when he offered to me for publication a series of articles on “The Lake of Tiberias,” which were to be illustrated by his wife. This was during one of his brief visits to England from the Holy Land, where he had made his home, and he would sometimes lunch with me at the Garrick Club, holding me enthralled, while the passing hours sped by unnoticed, as he unfolded his views of life, drawn from the deep fund of a rich experience won in many changing occupations.

Brilliant and witty, earnest and often eloquent in his most serious moods, there was scarcely more than a hint in his conversation of those shifting impulses, now so passionately held and again so swiftly abandoned, that had made of his career something of a wonder to the world. Unhappily the task which he and his wife had jointly undertaken for the Magazine, led to her untimely death, from sudden fever, upon the very shores of the lake where she was engaged upon the illustrations for his article.

One of the things which gave me most pleasure in my record as an editor was the encouragement that I was enabled to afford to that gifted young draughtsman Hugh Thomson, on the threshold of his career.

I remember very well the day he first entered my office. He was wholly unknown to me, and without any introduction save that which he presented himself in the form of a number of drawings enclosed in a portfolio that he bore in his hand. With the face of a mere boy, and most emphatically an Irish boy, it seemed to me, as I looked at him, scarcely possible that the drawings that he showed me were from his own hand.

They comprised, I remember, a series of illustrations to _Vanity Fair_, and despite the confessed immaturity of their execution, they exhibited, as I thought, such fineness of perception, and such an intuitive sense of humour, that I was at once anxious to learn from him what he had already published.

His reply, perhaps made with a little reluctance, was that he had published nothing, and again the suspicion recurred to me that this nervous youth, who stood in such evident anxiety before me, must somehow have become possessed of these drawings which he was trying to palm off as his own. He was, as I found on questioning him, engaged in making drawings for trade advertisements in the firm of Maclure, Macdonald and Macgregor, confessedly not a very promising experience upon which to base his claim to be engaged on the staff of an established magazine.

And yet, as I looked first at him and then at the drawings he had submitted to me, I felt I could not let him go without a trial, and, still in my doubtful mood, I suggested to him that he should execute a drawing, the subject of which was to be chosen by me, and that I would give him a fortnight to see what he could make of it.

Almost at hazard I asked him to make a drawing illustrating the social life of Pall Mall during the later days of the eighteenth century, and the quick look of pleasure with which he accepted the task at once drove from my mind any remnant of suspicion with which I had at first received him. Within a fortnight he returned with a very remarkable essay for a youth, and I afterwards published it in the pages of the Magazine.

From that day he became a constant contributor to its pages, and when the series of drawings illustrating Sir Roger de Coverley were ultimately gathered into book form, he at once made his mark with all who were competent to judge.

_Hollyer_

JAMES MARTINEAU

From the painting by G. F. WATTS, R.A., in the National Portrait Gallery.

_To face page 167._ ]