Some of the rebels of 1889 have developed into the academics of thirty years later, and Punch's list of the most notable contributors makes us jump as well as think: John S. Sargent, Solomon J. Solomon, Whistler, B. Sickert, Tuke, Edward Stott, A. Roche, N. Garstin, G. Roussell, Sidney Starr, F. Brown, A. Mann, H. Vos, W. J. Laidlaw and J. E. Christie.
Punch, then, cannot be written down as a Philistine, but there is no denying the fact that his artistic judgment was warped and impaired by his invincible hostility to the æsthetic movement; his inability to disentangle the good in it from the evil; his confusion of charlatanry and sincerity; and his failure to recognize the great services rendered by Morris in the domain of decorative design. Prejudice and ignorance mingle with good sense and good feeling in the manifesto which Punch put forth in 1882, and which may serve as a general exposition of his artistic and literary creed in the 'eighties:—
IN EARNEST
Let us be clearly understood. The word "Æstheticism" has been perverted from its original meaning; i.e. the perception of all that is good, pure and beautiful in Nature and in Art, and, as now vulgarly applied, it has come in a slang sort of way to stand for an effeminate, invertebrate, sensuous, sentimentally-Christian, but thoroughly Pagan taste in literature and art, which delights in the idea of the resuscitation of the Great God Pan, in Swinburnian songs at their highest fever-pitch, in the mystic ravings of a Blake, the affectation of a Rossetti, the Charmides and revoltingly pantheistic Rosa Mystica of Oscar Wilde, the Songs of Passion and Pain and other similar mock-hysterical imitations of the "Mighty Masters." Victor Hugo, Ouida, Swinburne, Burne-Jones, have much to answer for.
ACUTE CHINAMANIA
May: "Mamma! Mamma! Don't go on like this, pray!!"
Mamma (who has smashed a favourite pot): "What have I got left to live for?"
May: "Haven't you got me, Mamma?"
Mamma: "You, child! You're not unique!! There are six of you—a complete set!!"
This Æstheticism, as it has gradually come to be known, is the reaction from Kingsley's muscular Christianity. Exaggerated muscular Christianity, in its crusade against canting and whining religion, in its bold attempt to show that the practice of true religion was for men, as well as for women, trampled on the Christian Lily, emblem of perfect purity; and what Athleticism trod under foot, Æstheticism picked up, cherished, and then, taking the sign for the reality, paid to it the extravagant honours of a Pagan devotion; and the worship of the Lily was substituted for the veneration paid to the sacred character, in whose hand Christian Art had originally placed it. To this was added the worship of the Peacock's Feather. It is this false Æstheticism which we have persistently attacked, and will persistently attack to the bitter end, and henceforward those who misunderstand us do so wilfully, and it may be maliciously.
Whistler and Ruskin
Punch was justified in deploring the opportunism of Millais in painting "pot-boilers" and "pretty-pretty" pictures, such as "Bubbles." He had powerful and well-equipped allies in his view that Whistler in his later manner left off painting or etching where the difficulties began, a view expressed in the lines in 1883 on "Whistler in Venice":—
Whistler is "Niminy-Piminy,"
Funny, fantastic, and quaint.
Yet he's so clever that Jimmy nigh
Makes men believe he can paint.