"Noblesse oblige"
Atlas, look at this! It has been culled from the Plumber and Decorator, of all insidious prints, and forwarded to me by the The World, Dec. 31, 1884. untiring people who daily supply me with the thinkings of my critics.
Read, Atlas, and let me execute myself:
"The 'Peacock' drawing-room of a well-to-do shipowner, of Liverpool, at Queen's Gate, London, is hand-painted, representing the noble bird with wings expanded, painted by an Associate of the Royal Academy, at a cost of £7000, and fortunate in claiming his daughter as his bride, and is one of the finest specimens of high art in decoration in the kingdom. The mansion is of modern construction."
He is not guilty, this honest Associate! It was I, Atlas, who did this thing—"alone I did it"—I "hand-painted" this room in the "mansion of modern construction."
Woe is me! I secreted, in the provincial shipowner's home, the "noble bird with wings expanded"—I perpetrated, in harmless obscurity, "the finest specimen of high-art decoration"—and the Academy is without stain in the art of its member. Also the immaculate character of that Royal body has been falsely impugned by this wicked "Plumber"!
Mark these things, Atlas, that justice may be done, the innocent spared, and history cleanly written.
Bon soir!
Chelsea.