Miss Timby-Hucks seemed to like the phrase, and made a note of it on the back of her catalogue. “Yes,” she continued, “I thought of making my criticism general, dealing with things like that. But I’ve got some awfully interesting figures to put in. For example, there are sixty-eight Academicians and Associates exhibiting: they have one hundred and thirty-five oil paintings, sixteen water-colour or black-and-white drawings, eight architectural designs, and twenty-three pieces of sculpture—a total of one hundred and eighty-two works of art, or two and sixty-seven hundredths each. I got at that by dividing the total number of works by the total number of Academicians. Do you think any one else will be likely to print that first in a daily paper? Mrs Umpelbaum told me that Maida Vale made a special point of new facts. I don’t think I shall say much about the pictures themselves. What is there to say about pictures by the Academicians? As I told mamma this morning, they wouldn’t be Academicians if they didn’t paint good pictures, would they? and good pictures speak for themselves. Of course, I shall describe the subjects of Sir Frederic’s pictures—by the way, what is a Hesperides?—and some of the others: I’ll get you to pick out for me a few leading names. But I shall make my main point the splendid advance of lady-artists—I heard some one say in the other room there’d never been half so many before—and the elevating effect this has upon British Art. In fact, mightn’t I say that is what makes British Art what it is to-day?”
“It is one of the reasons, undoubtedly,” I assented, as I rose. “There are others, however.”
“Ees, I know,” said Miss Timby-Hucks: “the diffusion of Christian principles amongst us, our high national morality, and the sanctity of the English home. Mrs Albert said only last night that these lay at the very foundation of British art.”
“Mrs Albert is a woman of discernment,” I said, making a gesture of farewell.
But Miss Timby-Hucks on the instant thought of something. Her eyes glistened, her two upper front teeth gleamed. “O, it’s just occurred to me!” she exclaimed, moving nearer to my side, and speaking-in confidential excitement. “I know now how that lady-reporter manages with the hairdressers and dentists. She doesn’t pay them money at all. She mentions their names in the papers instead. How dull of me not to have thought of that before! Why—yes—I will!—I’ll put my dressmaker among the Private View celebrities!”
One likes to be civil to people who are obviously going to succeed in the world. I forthwith took Miss Timby-Hucks out to luncheon.
Relating to Various Phenomena attending the Progress of the Sex along Lines of the Greatest Resistance
My own idea,” said Uncle Dudley, “is that women ought to be confined to barracks during elections just the same as soldiers.”