stylists who are trying to discount Old Mastership will survive their pictures,” was Cornpepper’s commentary on a phase of the newer art. “They will leave masterpieces of invisibility.”
A good many changes had taken place in the Art world since Matthew Strang had first had the felicity of drinking whiskey in Cornpepper’s studio. The flowing tide was now with the decorative artists, of whom the “Mack” of that evening had proved a pioneer; the Fishtown school of photographic realism had lived long enough to be orthodox; the Azure Art Club itself was half absorbed by the Academy, and a new formula of revolt was momently expected on the horizon; some said it was to be Primitive, others mysteriously whispered “spots”; to-night Herbert, with mock seriousness, announced that he himself was about to lead a movement, the originality of which consisted in seeing Nature through stained glass. What weird magic a landscape gained when observed through a green or pink window! But he found the men not so willing to talk of principles as in the days of Cornpepper’s Bohemian parties, when Carrie with the whiskey bottle stood for the sober club attendant with his tray of liqueur brandies. The conversation was rigidly concrete, except for a moment when Cornpepper nearly came to hot words with the photographic painter who insisted that Nature was always beautiful. The little man, glaring through his monocle and rasping the plush arm-chair with his nails, insisted that this was sheer cant, one had only to look in the glass to see how ugly Nature could sometimes be! Selection was the only excuse for Art. Random transcripts from Nature were as foolish as the excesses of the Neo-Japanese school, into which the Azure Art Gallery had degenerated. But this lapse of Cornpepper’s into his early manner was brief. Recovering himself, he told a malicious anecdote about an artist who was taking to etching because his eyesight was failing, and he explained the domesticity of British Art by the objection of artists’ wives to all models except babies. Everybody knew, he said, why Carruthers had been driven to landscape and Christmas supplements. “Depend upon it,” dogmatized the little man with his most owlish air of wisdom, “the man who marries his model is lost. She will never tolerate a model on the premises again.”
His fellow-Associate told a story of a stock-broker who had got himself invited to the Greenwich dinner last year, and had asked Erle-Smith to give him the sketch of passing barges which the great man had pencilled on his sketch-book after dinner. “Erle-Smith good-naturedly gave it to him. This year he was there again, and said with proud respect to Erle-Smith, ‘I’ve still got that sketch.’ And produced it crumpled up from his waistcoat pocket!”
“Yes, but did you hear Vanbrugh’s mot?” asked Trapp. “He said, ‘Naturally; being a financier he doubled it.’ ”
“Why, I said that!” cried Cornpepper, angrily.
“No doubt,” said Herbert. “It’s a well-known chestnut.”
“Then I pulled it out of the fire,” screamed Cornpepper.
Somebody exhibited another sketch, grotesquely indecorous, by a popular painter of religious masterpieces, and the latest epigram on the divorce case of the hour was repeated and enjoyed. But Matthew Strang’s laughter held no merriment.