The lady-reporter looked at me for a furtive instant dubiously. Then she smiled a little under her veil. “You do say such odd things!” she remarked. “I am glad to see that a great many ladies are present. It shows how we are securing our proper recognition in journalism. I believe there are actually more of us here than there are gentlemen-reporters—I should say gentle-men-critics. And it is the same in art, too. You can see—I’ve counted them up in my catalogue here—there are this year two hundred and forty-four lady-artists exhibiting in this Academy three hundred and forty-six works of art. Think of that! Fifty of them are described as Mrs, and there are one hundred and ninety-four who are unmarried.”
“Think of that!” I retorted.
“And there are among them,” Miss Timby-Hucks went on, “one Marchioness, one Countess, one Baroness, and one plain Lady. I am going to begin my article with this. I think it will be interesting, don’t you?”
“I’d be careful not to particularise about the plain Lady,” I suggested. “That might be too interesting.”
She was over-full of her subject to smile. “No, I mean,” she said, “as showing how the ranks of British Art are being filled from the very highest classes, and are appealing more and more to the female intellect. I don’t believe it will occur to any one else to count up in the catalogue. So that will be original with me—to enlighten my sex as to the glorious part they play in this year’s Academy.”
“But have you seen their pictures?” I asked, repressing an involuntary groan.
“Every one!” replied Miss Timby-Hucks. “They are all good. There isn’t what I should call a bad one—that is, a Frenchy or immoral one—among them. I shall say that, too, in my criticism; but of course I shall have to word it carefully, because I fancy Mr Umpelbaum is a foreigner of some sort—and you know they’re all so sensitive about the superiority of British Art.”
“It is their nature; they can’t help it,” I pointed out. “They try their best, however, to master these unworthy emotions. Sometimes, indeed, their dissimulation reaches a really high plane of endeavour.”
“They have nothing at all on the Continent like our Royal Academy, I am told,” said Miss Timby-Hucks. “That isn’t generally known, is it? I had thought of saying it.”
“It will be a safe statement,” I assured her. “You might go further, and assert that no other country at any stage of its history has had anything like the Royal Academy. It is the unique blossom of British civilisation.”