“Oh, I don’t know, sir,” said Jack, with an embarrassed laugh. “We all of us say our say.”
“But that is the say of most of you, I suppose,” said his father.
“Well, sir, I suppose every generation has its own standard. ‘The old order changeth,’ don’t you know—in art as well as in other things.”
“I see; and you think we know precious little about it,” said Mr. Sandford, with a joyless smile which curled his lip without obeying any mirthful impulse. He felt angry and unreasonably annoyed at the silly boys who knew so little. “But they know how to put that rubbish into words, and they get it published, and it affects the general opinion,” he said to himself, with perhaps a feeling, not unnatural in the circumstances, that he would like to drown those kittens with their miauling about things they knew nothing about. Angry moods, however, did not last long in Mr. Sandford’s mind. He went back to his studio and looked at the “Black Prince” in the light of these criticisms. And he found that some of the old courtiers in attendance on the sick warrior did look unfeignedly like old models, which indeed they were, and that there was more composition than life in the attitudes of the women. “I always thought that arm should come like this,” he said to himself, taking up his chalk.
One day about this time he had a visit from Daniells, the picture dealer, leading a millionaire—a newly-fledged one—who was making a gallery and buying right and left. Daniells, though he was very dubious about his h’s, was a good fellow, and always ready to stand by a friend. He was taking his millionaire a round of the studios, and especially to those in which there was something which had not “come off,” according to his phraseology. The millionaire was exceptionally ignorant and outspoken, expressing his own opinion freely. “What sort of a thing have we got here?” he said, walking up to the “Black Prince;” “uncommon nice lot of girls, certainly; but what are they all doing round the fellow out of the hospital? I say, is it something catching?” he cried, giving Mr. Sandford a dig with his elbow. Daniells laughed at this long and loudly, but it was the utmost the painter could do to conjure up a simple smile. He explained as well as he could that they were begging for life, and that the town was being sacked, a terrible event of which his visitor might have heard.
“Sacked,” said the millionaire; “you mean that they’re factory hands and have got the sack, or that they have been just told they’ve got to work short time. I understand that; and it shows how human nature’s just the same in all ages. But I can tell you that in Lancashire it’s a nice rowing he’d have got instead of all these sweet looks. They would not have let him off like that, don’t you think it. Wherever you get your women from, ours ain’t of that kind.”
Sandford tried to explain what kind of a sack it was, but he did not succeed, for the rich man was much pleased with his own view.
“It’s a fine picture,” said Daniells; “Mr. Sandford, he’s one of the very best of our modern masters, sir. He has got a great name, and beautiful his pictures look in a gallery with the others to set ’em off. Hung on the line in the Academy, and collected crowds. I shouldn’t ’a been surprised if they’d ’ad to put a rail round it like they did to Mr. Frith’s.”
He gave a wink at Mr. Sandford as he spoke, which made our poor painter sick.
“I’ve got one of Frith’s,” said the millionaire.