From Seven to Seventy: Memories of a Painter and a Yankee

by Edward Simmons

From the other side of the compartment leaned forward a retired British major—a man you could see had evidently conquered with difficulty his childish habit of dropping his aitches. In a gentle, deprecating voice, he answered:

“My dear young sir, permit me to hope that during your stay with us here you will refrain from any desire to make a mock of our holier institutions. Do not, I pray you, carp at Our Gracious Majesty.”

He did not get down on his belly on the floor—only mentally—but I had the awful feeling that he was longing to do so. Queen Victoria (and that was long before the admirable book by Lytton Strachey) could never produce such an effect upon a sane Yankee.

Speaking of aitches, I once told Leslie Stephen that every Englishman was careless with them, even himself. He roared and insisted that only the lower classes dropped them or added them. I then asked him to say, “White witch which I met on the Isle of Wight.” Of course he stumbled. This softening of the aitch to a point where it seems to disappear is a habit peculiar to the inbred Britisher—just as the “r” is to the Bostonian and the “d” to the Spaniard.

I once discussed this with an educated and learned Englishman from the commoner class. He was only a graduate of the College of London, but knew his Latin and Greek better than any American and had been spending his time teaching the children of the vulgar rich of Pittsburgh. He insisted that the habit of dropping the aitches was prevalent in those parts of England where the Romans had permanently settled—all along inside the Wall. He cited a poem of Catullus which mocked at the fashionable dudes of Rome for the foolish habit they had taken up of dropping and adding their aitches. If this were the fashion in the mother country, it would certainly have penetrated to the Roman settlers of England.

My later attempts at an artistic invasion of London were no more successful than my first poor effort to paint a cockney coachman. In the year 1888 I sent two pictures to the Royal Academy which were duly accepted and hung. Imagine my joy when a large and formidable communication found its way to my studio in Paris, asking the price of one of my canvases and signed by the Chantry Bequest. This was a well-known fund created to buy pictures for the government to place in its permanent galleries, and everyone knew that, once the price had been asked, it amounted to the same thing as a sale. In fact, according to the British precedent—which is generally iron-bound, a request was a sale. I replied, as they expected me to do (this was also according to rule), that my price was four hundred pounds. The picture, which I called “The Carpenter’s Son,” was a simple pose of one of my children in my studio. A blond boy with a light shining over his head sat dreaming, instead of sweeping out the shop, while his mother, in the back, told his father what a worthless son he had begotten. The shavings had accidentally fallen in the form of a cross, and the light seemed to be a halo. The Scotsman came out with a scathing denunciation of the work (not at the idea, mind you) but because, as they said, I had been sacrilegious enough to paint Christ in the costume of a French peasant boy! Of course, the Chantry Bequest did not buy—for the first time—after asking the price.

It was very amusing to hear that when the picture was afterward exhibited in America, a woman of the old New England type was seen standing before it and weeping, saying between sobs:

“Oh, what a terrible thing! They have crucified our Saviour again!”

This was more than a Concord Unitarian could understand.

The next year I took courage and sent another canvas to the Academy—this time an inoffensive thing of an old man kissing his wife good-by—which I called “Darby and Joan.” Through some mistake, it was marked “sold” in the book which is left on a table to give the record of sales. Some of my friends seeing this, and having it confirmed by the person in charge, telegraphed me congratulations, I being away down in Cornwall. It was customary to notify the artist as soon as a sale was consummated and, as I heard nothing, I wrote to the secretary (whom we always called “Pants Exclusively,” on account of his tradesman instincts) and asked him to confirm it. He answered that one of the officials had marked the book by mistake and that the picture was not sold. I wrote and asked him to take it off the book and to advertise it as “still for sale.” No answer. All through that exhibition my picture was hung and marked “sold,” thereby preventing anyone else from buying it, and this in spite of the fact that I wrote to protest about it three times. Then I did a terrible thing! I issued a writ against the Royal Academy! British honor was sullied, British institutions had been assailed. Never before had anyone dared to invoke the law against that august and distinguished body—the Royal Academy!