Over this jeu d'esprit on my part Sala waxed very wroth, for besides having to pay £80 costs of his own, he brought upon himself columns of chaff, of which the following is a fair specimen. "The Prince of Journalists," wrote a wag of journalists, "is lamenting that he has jumped out of the Furniss into the fire, for of a surety five pounds will hardly repay Mr. Sala for the roasting he will receive from his good-natured friends." Skits showing six toes were plentiful, jokes in burlesque and on the music-hall stage were introduced as a matter of course, and private chaff in letters was kept up for some time. One private letter I wrote du Maurier, "Sala has no sole for humour—you have made me put my foot in it," and added the Six Toes signature sketch. In this no doubt du Maurier found inspiration for Trilby.
In the witness-box Mr. Sala took up a curious position with regard to that filched and fatal joke. He said that I told that joke because he had been invited to distribute the prizes at the Art School at Nottingham shortly before, and that I had run down and, like the miscreant who sowed tares in his neighbour's wheat, deliberately made him look ridiculous. As a matter of fact, I neither knew that Sala had distributed the prizes, nor that he had ever put in an appearance at Nottingham. Sala in his evidence said, "I have always been well received there (Nottingham). The people have always been very kind to me, and they expressed surprise at the libel." Nottingham people reading this, assured me it was the very reverse of the facts, that Sala was socially anything but friendly and most objectionable in his behaviour when there; and they invited me to distribute the prizes the following year, which I did—the last stage of all of this strange, eventful joke, which ended, as it began, in good-natured laughter.
THE SEQUEL: I DISTRIBUTE THE PRIZES AT NOTTINGHAM.
HE one confession I desire in all seriousness should reach the ears of my fellow artists is that my object in attacking the Royal Academy ("Royal Academy Antics," 1890), was a thoroughly unselfish one. "It was published for the sake of those who, for one reason or another, are not within the inner circle. I was prompted to call the discriminating attention of the public to the evil the Academy works and permits to exist," by appeals from artists outside—heartbroken men and women smarting under unfair treatment; I received letters recording cases of gross injustice, followed by ruin and poverty—which made my blood boil. The shortcomings of the Academicians had been the subject of criticism for many years, yet no improvement resulted. As the Times pathetically observed: "At least it should not be taken for granted that improvement is impossible till improvement has been attempted. This much has been forced upon us by the painful knowledge of the many bitter, often heartbreaking, disappointments which cloud the opening of the Royal Academy Exhibition, when London looks bright and blooming, and everyone and everything around seems so full of life, and so eager and capable of enjoyment. It is impossible for those whose office carries them behind the scenes, in the midst of the festive and fashionable crowd which throngs the stately rooms of the Academy, not to think of the poor lodging and the shabby studio, and the easel, the rejected picture, the subject of so much labour, the spring of so many hopes, which was expected to win bread, if not fame, for the painter." Perfectly true, but oh, how pathetic! to those, like myself, "whose office carries them behind the scenes." It is pleasant to keep friendly with those Royal Academicians and their friends and worshippers—that "festive and fashionable crowd"—and to be on good terms with the givers of banquets and the pets of Society; but I care little for such, for I am neither a logrolling journalist nor a Society-seeking artist, and at the risk of having my independence mistaken for egotism, I have always expressed my opinions openly and freely, quite regardless of, and not caring one jot for, those whose friendship I lost in consequence—no, not even as in this case, where the very artists who confessed to me, and who appealed to me to attack the Academy, subsequently avoided me, as "it wouldn't do, don't you know, to be seen with Furniss, as I am in the running for the Academy." This was my dedication.
THE SEE-SAW ANTIC.