When we came out of Glasgow town
There was really nothing at all to see
Except Legros and Professor Brown,
But now there is Guthrie and Lavery.
Undaunted Sir Bedivere drags his burden to a hermitage near Coniston; but he finds it ruined; he bars the door in order to administer refreshment to the wounded Pre-Raphaelite; there is a knocking at the wicket-gate; is it the younger generation? No, he can hear the tread of the royal sargent-at-arms; his spurs and sword are clanking on the pavement. Sir Bedivere feels his palette parched; his tongue cleaves to the roof of St. Paul’s; but he is undaunted. ‘We are surely betrayed if that is really Sargent,’ he says. Through the broken tracery of the Italian Gothic window
a breeze or draught comes softly and fans his strong academic arms; he feels a twinge. Some Merlin told him he would suffer from ricketts with shannon complications. Seizing Excalibur, he opens the door cautiously. ‘Draw, caitiffs,’ he cries; ‘draw.’ ‘Perhaps they cannot draw; perhaps they are impressionists,’ said a raven on the hill; and he flew away.
(1906.)
To Sir William Blake Richmond, R.A., K.C.B.
THE ECLECTIC AT LARGE.
In The Education of an Artist, Mr. Lewis Hind invented a new kind of art criticism—a pleasing blend of the Morelli narrative (minus the scientific method) and Mr. Sponge’s Sporting Tour. He contrives a young man, ignorant like the Russian, Lermoliev, who receives certain artistic impressions, faithfully recorded by Mr. Hind and visualised for the reader in a series of engaging half-tone illustrations. The hero’s name is itself suggestive—Claude Williamson Shaw. By the end of the book he is nearly as learned as Mr. Claude Phillips: he might edit a series of art-books with all the skill of Dr. Williamson, and his power of racy criticism rivals that of Mr. George Bernard Shaw. You can hardly escape the belief that these three immortals came from the north and south, gathered as unto strife, breathed upon his mouth and filled his body—with ideas: Mr. Hind supplying the life.
But this is not so: the ideas are all Mr. Hind’s and the godfathers only supplied the name. What a name it is to be sure! It recalls one of Ibsen’s plays: ‘Claude Williamson Shaw was a miner’s son—a Cornish miner’s son, as you know; or perhaps you didn’t know. He was always wanting plein-air.’ Some one ought to say that in the book, but I must say it instead. At all events, Mr. Hind nearly always refers to him by his three names, and every one must think of him in the same way, otherwise side issues will intrude themselves—thoughts of other things and people. ‘O Captain Shaw, type of true love kept under,’ is not inapposite, because Claude Williamson Shaw fell in love with a lady who in a tantalising manner became a religious in one of the strictest Orders, the rules of which were duly set forth in old three-volume novels; that is the only conventional incident in the book. C. W. S., although he trains for painting, is admitted by Mr. Hind to be quite a bad artist. Apart, therefore, from the admirable criticism which is the main feature of the book, it shows great courage on the part of the inventor, great sacrifice, to admit
that C. W. S. was a failure as an artist. Bad artists, however, are always nice people. I do not say that the reverse is true; indeed, I know many good and even great artists who are charming; but I never met a thoroughly inferior painter (without any promise of either a future or a past) who was not irresistible socially. This accounts for some of the elections at the Royal Academy, I believe, and for the pictures on the walls of your friends whose taste you know to be impeccable. There is more hearty recognition of bad art in England than the Tate Gallery gives us any idea of.
I know that the Chantrey Trustees were deprived of the only possible excuse for their purchases by the finding of Lord Lytton’s Commission; but I, for one, shall always think of them as kindly men with a fellow-feeling for incompetence, who would have bought a work by Claude Williamson Shaw if the opportunity presented itself. I have sometimes tried to imagine what the pictures of invented artists in fiction or drama were really like—I fear they were all dreadful performances. I used to imagine that Oswald