19 Queen Street, Mayfair, W.,
June 24.
Dear Sir Frederic,—I trust you will allow me to express to you the sincere regret I feel at your being compelled to give up your command of the "Artists." To myself volunteering has always been so inseparably connected with your command, that I cannot at present realise the extent of the blank which your resignation will create. I shall ever remember with pride that it was under your auspices that I rose through the ranks and obtained my commission.—Believe me, dear Sir Frederic, very truly yours,
W. Pasteur.
Sir Frederic Leighton, P.R.A.
[67] The following correspondence took place between Leighton and Mr. Henry Wells, R.A.
To Sir Frederic Leighton, P.R.A.
January 27, (?) 1880.
I will avail myself of this opportunity to remark upon the statement you made in your summing up, viz. that if women were made members under the existing law they would not have the right to sit on Council.
If you can establish this, if you can show us that any one elected a "member" under our law can be debarred on the score of sex from taking a seat on the Council, then I will instantly allow that our laws do provide for the election of women, and that the very ground of our argument is proved to be a quicksand. When you endorsed the statement that came so naturally from Millais, Calderon, and Leslie, I felt the matter was serious, for I saw at once that you could not do justice to our argument in the summing up because its very foundation was misapprehended by you. Although the question is now disposed of, I beg of you to look closely into the matter and assure yourself of it. I only wish I had known beforehand where your doubts were centered, for I would have done my best to remove them. I know you will find, beyond all doubt and controversy, that any one made a "member" by election can make good a claim to a seat on the Council, just as Mr. Tresham made good his claim; and it is because our laws provide for only one kind of members—a Council-sitting kind—that we felt the necessity of providing for the election of a non-Council-sitting kind.
In making this distinction we follow the example of George the Third and the founders of the Academy (who presumably knew something of the understanding upon which the two ladies became connected with the Society), for their decision, when they administered the law in the Tresham case, excluded women from a privilege which could not be denied to a "member" elected under the law. Of course their and our interpretation is open to dispute; but this much is beyond dispute, that if the law is interpreted as providing for women being "members," then it also places them (against the intention, as we see, of the founders) upon the Council; and as the great majority of the present Academicians have made up their minds that women shall not sit on Council, legislation would be necessary on either reading of the law.