Enter Sir Patrick Cullen, Sir Ralph Bloomfield Bonnington and Sir Colenso Ridgeon.
Sir C. Ridgeon. Ah, Sir Patrick, I have just heard that the pictures are for sale; now I am going to plunge a little. I think they will rise in value; and by the way I want to ask your opinion as a scientific man. If I treat four artists with virus obscænum for three weeks, what will be the condition of the remaining artists in the fourth week?
Sir P. Cullen. Colenso, Colenso, you ought to have been a senior wrangler and then abolished.
Sir C. Ridgeon. What a cynic you are. All the same I’ve had great successes, though Dubedat was one of our failures. A rather anæmic member of the New English Art Club come to me for treatment, and in less than a year he was an Associate of the Royal Academy; what do you say to that?
Sir P. Cullen. Out of Phagocyte, out of mind.
Sir R. B. B. My dear Sir Patrick, how prejudiced you are. Take MacColl’s case: a typical instance of morbus ferox ars nova
anglicana: under dear Colenso he became an official at the Tate.
Sir C. Ridgeon. Then there’s Sir Charles Holroyd, you remember his high tempera?
Sir P. Cullen. There has been a relapse I hear from the catalogue.
Sir R. B. B. How grossly unfair; that is a false bulletin issued by the former nurse: ‘the evil that men do lives after them.’