Nor do we find that the painter is in this matter less sensible than his artistic brethren. The late Sir John Millais expresses very accurately the sensible spirit in which all great artists attend to the varied voices of critics as against the unanimous voice of the Box Office.
I have now lost all hope of gaining just appreciation in the Press; but thank goodness ‘the proof of the pudding is in the eating.’ Nothing could have been more adverse than the criticism on ‘The Huguenot,’ yet the engraving is now selling more rapidly than any other of recent time. I have great faith in the mass of the public, although one hears now and then such grossly ignorant remarks.
The artist then gives instances of public criticism in other arts with which he disagrees; but the only matter that I am concerned with is that in his own art, and for himself, he has arrived at the Box Office conclusion that the proof of the pudding is in the eating.
I have searched through many biographies in hopes of finding the writer or artist who was wholly uninfluenced by the Box Office. If he existed, or was likely to exist, he would be found, one would think, in large numbers among those well-to-do folk who had ample means and could devote their lives to developing their genius and ability solely for the good of mankind. It must seem curious to those who despise the Box Office to find how little good work is achieved by men and women who are under no necessity of appealing to that institution for support.
If I had been asked to name any writer of my own time who was absolutely free from any truck with the Box Office, I should, before I had read his charming autobiography, have suggested Herbert Spencer. For indeed one would not expect to find a Box Office within the curtilage of a cathedral or a laboratory. Religion and science and their preachers have necessarily very little to do with the Box Office.
But Spencer was not only a great writer, but a keen scientific analyst of the facts of human life. He could not deceive himself—as so many of the literary folk do—as to his aims and objects. Looking back on the youthful valleys of his life from the calm mountain slopes that a man may rest on at the age of seventy-three, he asks himself
What have been the motives prompting my career? how much have they been egotistic, and how much altruistic? That they have been mixed there can be no doubt. And in this case, as in most cases, it is next to impossible to separate them mentally in such a way as to preserve the relations of amount among them. So deep down is the gratification which results from the consciousness of efficiency, and the further consciousness of the applause which recognised efficiency brings, that it is impossible for anyone to exclude it. Certainly, in my own case, the desire for such recognition has not been absent.
He continues to point out that this desire for recognition was ‘not the primary motive of my first efforts, nor has it been the primary motive of my larger and later efforts,’ and concludes, ‘Still, as I have said, the desire of achievement, and the honour which achievement brings, have doubtless been large factors.’
It is very interesting to note that a man like Herbert Spencer recognises what a large part the Box Office played in his own work—work which was rather the work of a scientist than the work of a literary man.