Chapter XI: Part II: The Social Fabric (5)

I. The power of criticism is a gift, and requires no previous
education.

II. The critic is greater than the artist.

III. The artist cannot know his own meaning. The critic's office is
to inform him of it.

IV. Painting is a mystery. The language of pictorial criticism,
like its subject, should be mysterious and unintelligible to the
vulgar. It is a mistake to classify it as ordinary English, the
rules of which it does not recognise.

V. Approbation should be sparingly given: it should be bestowed in
preference on what the general eye condemns. The critical dignity
must never be lowered by any explanation why a work of art is good
or bad.

[Sidenote: _Rules for Art Critics_]

CHARACTERISTICS OF PARTICULAR STYLES

1. _To criticise a Picture by Turner._--Begin by protesting against
his extravagance; then go on with a "notwithstanding." Combine such
phrases as "_bathed in sunlight_," "_flooded with summer glories_,"
"_mellow distance_," with a reference to his earlier pictures; and
wind up with a rapturous rhapsody on the philosophy of art.

2. _To criticise a Picture by Stanfield._--Begin by unqualified
praise; then commence detracting, first on the score of "_sharp,
hard outline_"; then of "_leathery texture_"; then of "_scenic
effect of the figures_"; and conclude by a wish he had never been a
scene painter.

3. _To criticise a Picture by Etty._--Begin by delirious
satisfaction with his "_delicious carnations_" and "_mellow
flesh-tones_." Remark on the skilful arrangement of colour and
admirable composition; and finish with a regret that Etty should
content himself with merely painting from "_the nude Academy
model_," without troubling himself with that for which you had just
before praised him.--N.B. Never mind the contradiction.

4. _To criticise a Picture by E. Landseer._--Here you are bound to
unqualified commendation. If the subject be Prince Albert's Hat or
the Queen's Macaw, some ingenious compliment to royal patrons is
expected.

_Punch_ will be happy to supply newspaper critics with similar
directions for "doing" all the principal painters in similar style.

He subjoins some masterly specimens of artistic criticism:--

The "_facile princeps_" of daily critics of art (he of the Post)
has the following, in a criticism of Herbert's _Gregory and
Choristers_:--

"There is a want of _modulative melody_ in its colours and
mellowness in _its hand_ (whose?), pushed to an _outré_ simplicity
in _the plainness and ungrammatical development of its general
effect_. The handling is firm and simple, though in the drapery
occasionally too square and inflexible."

YE EXHYBITYON. AT YE ROYAL ACADEMYE.]

The neglect and rough handling of the treasures of the National Gallery, where pictures presented to the nation were buried in a vault, is a frequent source of indignant comment throughout this period--note for example "The Pictures' Petition" in 1853. But in another sense contemporary pictures were roughly handled by _Punch_. Thus in 1849 he puts in an effective plea for realism as against Wardour Street "Old Clo'," and appeals to artists to "paint human beings instead of clothes-horses." There is indeed a strangely familiar ring in "Mr. Pips's" notes on the R.A. Exhibition of the year:--

"The Exhibition at large I judge to be a very excellent middling
one, many Pictures good in their kind, but that Kind in very few
cases high. The Silks and Satins mostly painted to admiration, and
the Figures copied carefully from the Model; but this do appear too
plainly; and the action generally too much like a Scene in a Play."

The same complaint recurs in the following year, when _Punch_ is moved, as the result of visiting all the exhibitions then open to ask certain questions:--

Is painting a living art in England at this moment?

Is there a nineteenth century?

Are there men and women round about us, doing, acting, suffering?

Is the subject matter of Art, clothes? Or is it men and women,
their actions, passions and sufferings?

If Art is vital, should it not somehow find food among living
events, interests, and incidents? Is our life, at this day, so
unideal, so devoid of all sensuous and outward picturesqueness and
beauty, that for subjects to paint we must needs go back to the
Guelphs and Ghibellines, or to Charles the Second, or William the
Third, or George the Second?

[Sidenote: _The P.R.B._]

But much more interesting than these generalities--sound and sensible though they are--is the first reference to "certain young friends of mine, calling themselves--the dear silly boys--Pre-Raphaelites" in the same volume. It must certainly be admitted that in his earlier criticisms of the P.R.B.'s _Mr. Punch_ managed to dissemble his affection pretty effectively. The initial compliment in the notice of 1851 is largely discounted by what follows:--

Our dear and promising young friends, the Pre-Raphaelites, deserve
especial commendation for the courage with which they have dared to
tell some most disagreeable truths on their canvases this year. Mr.
Ruskin was quite right in taking up the cudgels against _The Times_
on this matter. The pictures of the P.R.B. _are_ true, and that's
the worst of them. Nothing can be more wonderful than the truth of
Collins's representation of the _Alisma Plantago_, _except_ the
unattractiveness of the demure lady, whose botanical pursuits he
has recorded under the name of CONVENT THOUGHTS.... By the size
of the lady's head he no doubt meant to imply her vast capacity of
brains--while by the utter absence of form and limb under the robe,
he subtly conveys that she has given up all thoughts of making a
figure in the world.

Mr. Millais's "_Mariana_ in the moated Grange" is obviously meant
to insinuate a delicate excuse for the gentleman who wouldn't
come--and to show the world the full import of Tennyson's
description:--

_then said she, "I am very dreary."_

Anything drearier than the lady, or brighter than her blue velvet
robe, it is impossible to conceive.

[Sidenote: _Commercialism in Art_]

But Punch _makes_ the _amende_ most handsomely in 1852:--

Before two pictures of Mr. Millais I have spent the happiest hour
that I have ever spent in the Royal Academy Exhibition. In those
two pictures [_Ophelia_ and _The Huguenot_] I find more loving
observation of Nature, more mastery in the reproduction of her
forms and colours, more insight into the sentiment of our greatest
poet, a deeper feeling of human emotion, a happier choice of a
point of interest, and a more truthful rendering of its appropriate
expression, than in all the rest of those eight hundred squares of
canvas put together.

In 1852 _Punch_ singles out, from a wilderness of niggling landscapes and highly-coloured and meretricious upholstery, Watts's "marvellous chalk drawing of Lord John Russell." For the rest,

Art is more of a trade now, than it was when Raphael's studio had
no other name than _bottega_--in English, shop; and moreover, it is
an emasculate and man-milliner sort of a trade, instead of one
demanding strong brains, and a brave and believing heart. It is a
trade mainly conversant with miserable things and petty aims--with
vanity, and ostentation and vulgarity, and sensuality and
frivolity--no longer dealing with themes of prayer and praise, with
the glories of beatitude, or the horror of damnation, with the
perpetuation of family dignities and devotions, the recording of
great events, the dignifying of public and national, or the
beautifying of private and individual life. It is a trade in
ornament, and its Academy is a shop, and its Exhibition a display
of rival wares, in which the best hope and the sole aim of the many
is to catch the eye of a customer; and he who "colours most highly,
is sure to please."

As a comprehensive indictment of the commercialism and triviality of Victorian art this leaves little to be desired. For an illustration of _Punch's_ altered opinion of the P.R.B.'s it may suffice to quote his palinode in 1853:--

Will you consider me ridiculous or blind when I assure you, on my
honour as a puppet and a public performer, that these young
gentlemen have written for me this year four of the sweetest and
deepest and most thoughtful books I have read since I laid down Mr.
Millais's historical romance of _The Huguenot_, last year? I am
sensible of the omniscience of the daily, and some of the weekly
papers, and I am aware that this is an opinion which should not be
breathed within ear-shot of places where they take in _The Times_,
and the _Morning Post_, and the _Examiner_. But I am a sort of
chartered libertine, and nobody will believe anything I say is
serious, so I can enjoy the luxury of saying what I feel, having no
character to keep up. Then I tell you frankly--not forgetting Edwin
Landseer's two grand cantos of his Highland Poem, _Night and
Morning by the Lochside_, or Stanfield's noble paean-picture of the
Battered Hull that carries the body of Nelson, like a Viking with
his ship for bier--not forgetting these and other picture-books
well worth reading--I tell you that Hunt's _Claudio and Isabella_
is to me _the_ book of the collection, though it records in colours
what Shakespeare has written in words; and that little, if at all
after it, comes Millais's _Order of Release_, and then the _Strayed
Sheep_ and _Proscribed Royalist_ of the same authors. I do not mean
to put either after the other, so I bracket them."

In accepting the principles of the P.R.B.'s _Punch_ shows all the zeal of the convert, as may be gathered from the following discourse published shortly afterwards:--

Art must adapt itself to the conditions of the time and the life it
has to reflect.

See what follows.

If pictures are to be hung in rooms instead of churches, and public
halls and palaces, they must be small.

Work on a small scale, being meant for the satisfaction of a close
eye, must be highly finished.

These conditions did not affect the old painters and must affect
the moderns, and these conditions my young friends the
Pre-Raphaelites appear to be conscious of and to submit to, for
which I cannot blame them, but praise them rather, for wisely
recognising the necessity of adapting Art to surrounding
circumstances.

What have they recognised besides?

That the truest representation and grandest creation may and must
be combined by the great artist; that as man works in a setting of
earth and air, all the beauties and fitness of that setting must be
rendered--the more truthfully the better--and that the most
accurate rendering of these need not detract from the crowning
work--the creation of the central interest which sums itself in
human expression.

The practice of painting hitherto has seemed to challenge the
possibility of combining these two things--human expression and
accurate representation of inanimate or lower nature. These young
men take up the gauntlet, and say, "We are prepared to do this--at
least to try and do it." Their first-fruits are before the world,
and already it has felt that the undertaking is new and startling
and cheerfully courageous: nay, more: that to a certain point--and
further than might be expected from such beardless champions--it
has already succeeded.

So God speed these young Luthers of the worn-out Art-faith; they
have burnt the Bull of the Painter-Popes of their time. They have
still enough work before them, such as their spiritual father
before them went through--devils of their own creating to hurl
their palettes at, and many mighty magnates to wrestle with, and
confute, and put to shame--by trust in their gospel truth that
Accurate Representation is the first requisite of Art.

[Sidenote: Enthusiasm of a Convert]

It may be added that when French medals were conferred on English artists in 1855, _Punch_ complained that the newer school, i.e. the P.R.B.'s, had been overlooked in favour of Court painters such as Landseer. As a set-off to these examples of _Punch's_ artistic and aesthetic _flair_ and enlightenment, it must be owned that in 1854 he had expressed high praise for Frith's _Ramsgate Sands_ (which was bought by the Queen) on account of its realism. But it may be accounted to him for righteousness that he supported Lord Stanhope's National Portrait Gallery Bill in 1856, and entered a vigorous protest against the vile "Germanism" of the title "Art Treasures Exhibition" instead of "Treasures of Art" for the show at Manchester in 1857. The more modern and equally vile Germanism "Concert-Direction Smith" or whoever the musical agent may be, has apparently been washed out by the War of 1914.

With all deductions and limitations _Punch's_ record as a critic of the fine arts acquits him handsomely of the charge of Philistinism.

PERSONALITIES

Towards the end of the period reviewed in this volume, _Punch_ enumerates his special _bêtes noires_ as "Humbug, Cant, Sleek Hypocrisy and Brazen Wrong." But as has already been abundantly proved, the list would have to be considerably extended to include all the personages, notable and notorious, who came under his lash. In earlier years he is much more specific. Thus in 1850 his amiable catalogue of the gentlemen and public bodies who have kindly consented to furnish him with game in the ensuing year contains Colonel Sibthorp, the bearded reactionary who sat for Lincoln, Barry, the architect of the new Houses of Parliament, all quack-medicine vendors, tyrants and woman-floggers (the Tsar Nicholas and Haynau are specially aimed at), Madame Tussaud, Lord Brougham, R.A.'s, the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's, Smithfield and all City nuisances, and all sinecurists and pensionists. In 1852 Panizzi (for his long deferred catalogue of the British Museum of which he was Chief Librarian), Cardinal Wiseman, and Lord Maidstone are added, together with Railway Directors, Homoeopathists and Protectionists.

Among the various devices adopted to ventilate his personal animosity may be noted _Punch's_ list of "desirable emigrants," and the ingenious suggestion that "Penal Statues" should be erected to commemorate the misdeeds of great offenders, obstructionists, bigots and anti-reformers. Of some of _Punch's_ butts it may be said that they were rescued from oblivion by his satire and caricature--Sibthorp for example, though he was by no means the merely reactionary buffoon who appears in _Punch_. He was eccentric in dress and figure, opposed all the great measures of Reform, and was the incarnation of ultra-Tory tradition. But he was frequently witty, and as truculently courageous as _Punch_ himself. Sir Peter Laurie, Alderman and Lord Mayor of London, stood to _Punch_ for all that was pompous, officious, meddlesome and even odious in City administration. We rub our eyes on reading in the D.N.B. that Sir Peter throughout his public life "devoted himself largely to schemes of social advancement, was a good magistrate and a disciple of Joseph Hume." But the explanation of this and other divergent records is simple enough. _Punch_ was often too angry or enthusiastic to be just or discriminating. He wrote on the spur of the moment, with the result that he often had to revise his verdicts. We have seen this change in regard to Prince Albert, the Duke of Wellington, and Palmerston, and already _Punch_ had reluctantly begun to admit that Disraeli was a force in politics and not a mere mountebank. The bitter attacks on Bulwer Lytton as a pinch-beck writer and padded dandy, which abound in the 'forties, ended in reconciliation and amity. We have seen the process at work again in the altered estimates of Jullien. Bunn was severely let alone, but only when it was found that the animal, as in the French saying, was so evil as to defend himself when he was attacked. Sometimes, however, _Punch_ was implacable and impenitent. He never appears to have had a really good word to say for Daniel O'Connell, but regarded Repeal throughout as a fraud, and the "Liberator" as a self-seeking and grasping agitator. When Dan promised in 1845 to achieve Repeal in six months or lay his head on the block, and did neither, _Punch_ only jeered at his "brazen boasting," and depicted him later on as the real "Potato Blight" of Ireland. Impenitence, too, marked his attitude towards both "Henry of Exeter" (Dr. Phillpotts), Pusey, and Wiseman; and his distrust of Louis Napoleon, after a brief period of reticence imposed during the Crimean War, revived in full force in the later 'fifties. We have also seen the converse of the process described above in the treatment of Cobden and Bright, who were rudely hauled down from their pinnacles when _Punch_ the peace-loving Free Trader developed in the Crimean War into the bellicose patriot. The change was made in the contrary direction with Peel, but the grace of recognition was grievously impaired by its delay. Posthumous honours are a sorry reparation for continual abuse of the living, and _Punch's_ treatment of Peel is one of the worst blots on his scutcheon. In _Punch's_ early volumes no abuse was too bad for the Conservative statesman. Even the Bible was ransacked for invidious parallels, which only stopped short of Judas. He was a "political eel," a "quack," a "genius or Janus," and there is a curious foreshadowing of the recriminations of our own time, in the way in which Peel, in virtue of his inveterate policy of temporizing, is saddled with the watchword "wait awhile."

[Sidenote: _"Punch's" Injustice to Peel_]

If "Jenkins" was _Punch's_ "chief butler"--in the sense of the supreme flunkey--Lord Brougham was his chief butt throughout these years. And certainly no public character in the nineteenth century ever played better into the hands of the satirist. His nose in the most literal sense lent a handle to the caricaturist. His tweed trousers figure as regularly in _Punch's_ portraits as the straw in Palmerston's mouth--which, by the way, is generally traced to a trick that "Pam" acquired in visiting his stables. Palmerston's nickname was "Cupid" from his gallantry: the mythological parallel for Brougham would have been Proteus. One of the earliest references to him in _Punch_ appears in the composite Preface to Vol. vi., in which each of the contributors ascribes to _Punch_ his own characteristics, Brougham praising him for "forswearing like a chameleon every shade of opinion, when for the moment he has ceased to wear it." Thereafter the fun becomes fast and furious. Brougham is charged with writing the flamboyant advertisements of George Robins, a veritable Barnum among auctioneers. His tweed trousers are explained as a cause of his always wanting to get back to the woolsack. He is credited, in virtue of his versatile activities, with the attempt to discover perpetual motion. Brougham's vanity, craving for office at all costs, meddlesomeness, and subservience to the Duke of Wellington are held up to contempt, and in "Rational Readings for Grown-up People" (an early anticipation of the Missing Word Competition) we read:--

If people may, without rebuke,
Call Wellington the "Iron----,"
Why then we safely may presume
The "Brazen Peer" to term Lord----.

The snobbishness of Brougham's arguments on behalf of royal princes in his Debtors' Bill again infuriates the democratic _Punch_, who in 1849 was even more disgusted by Brougham's fulsome championship of Radetzky and the Austrians when they defeated the Piedmontese. But _Punch's_ hostility reaches its height in the verses (accompanying a cartoon which represents Brougham standing on his head) describing the amazing farrago of inconsistencies which composed the mind of one who was at once a charlatan and encyclopædist, a reformer and a courtier. In the same year _Punch_ suggests a Bill should be promoted for "the better behaviour of the erotic and learned lord,"

Who'd rather mount the mountebank's stage than be laid on the shelf,
Who does with ease the difficult task of turning his back on himself.

Brougham's perversely obstructive attitude towards the Exhibition of 1851 excited _Punch's_ wrath, when he himself had become converted to the scheme, but already the tone of the paper had changed; and the turning point was reached on the occasion of Brougham's visit to America in 1850, when _Punch_ printed the following unofficial letter of introduction to the President of the United States:--

To General Taylor, President of the United States,

Favoured by Henry Lord Brougham, Member of the French Institute.

"Dear Taylor,

"I have much pleasure in making yourself and my friend
_Brougham_--the _Brougham_ whose fame is _not_ European but
world-wide--personally acquainted. With all his little drolleries,
he is an excellent fellow; and with all his oddities, he has worked
like a Hercules stable-boy at our Augean Courts of Law. He has
cheapened costs; he has well-nigh destroyed the race of sharp
attorneys. Indeed, if you would seek Brougham's monument, look
around every attorney's office; and you will _not_ see Brougham's
picture."

[Sidenote: _A Palinode to Brougham_]

_Punch_ had already welcomed Brougham's espousal of the anti-Sabbatarian cause, but the full avowal of reconciliation is to be found in the following graceful verses printed in 1851:--

A PALINODE

From _Punch_ to Henry Brougham

"During the last five or six weeks, he had with the utmost
difficulty, and against the opinion of his medical advisers,
attended the service of their Lordships' House. During the last ten
days the difficulty had increased and become more severe. In the
hope of assisting in this great measure, in a cause to which his
life had been devoted, he had struggled to the last, until he found
he could struggle no more."--_Lord Brougham's last speech on Law
Reform in the House of Lords._

And is the busy brain o'erwrought at last?
Has the sharp sword fretted the sheath so far?
Then, Henry Brougham, in spite of all that's past,
Our ten long years of all but weekly war,

Let _Punch_ hold out to you a friendly hand,
And speak what haply he had left unspoken
Had the sharp tongue lost naught of its command,
That nervous frame still kept its spring unbroken.

Forgot the changes of thy later years,
No more he knows the Ishmael once he knew,
Drinking delights of battle 'mongst the Peers--
Your hand 'gainst all men, all men's hands 'gainst you.

He knows the Orator whose fearless tongue
Lashed into infamy and endless scorn
The wretches who their blackening scandal flung
Upon a Queen--of women most forlorn.

He knows the lover of his kind, who stood
Chief of the banded few who dared to brave
The accursed traffickers in negro blood,
And struck his heaviest fetter from the slave;

The Statesman who, in a less happy hour
Than this, maintained man's right to read and know,
And gave the keys of knowledge and of power
With equal hand alike to high and low;

The Lawyer who, unwarped by private aims,
Denounced the Law's abuse, chicane, delay:
The Chancellor who settled century's claims,
And swept an age's dense arrears away;

The man whose name men read even as they run,
On every landmark the world's course along,
That speaks to us of a great battle won
Over untruth, or prejudice or wrong.

Remembering this, full sad I am to hear
That voice which loudest in the combat rung
Now weak and low and sorrowful of cheer,
To see that arm of battle all unstrung.

And so, even as a warrior after fight
Thinks of a noble foe, now wounded sore,
I think of thee, and of thine ancient might,
And hold a hand out, armed for strife no more.

This is a fine summary of Brougham's services as the friend of humanity, the champion of free speech and popular education, and the great legal reformer, erring, if at all, in the over-generous estimate of his disinterestedness as an advocate. Brougham recovered from his breakdown and lived for seventeen years longer--years crowded with multifarious activities, legal, scientific, literary. He was, in many ways, a unique figure in public life, though, when the lives of the Lord Chancellors are brought up to date in the next generation, he will not be able to avoid rivalry on the score of early advancement, versatility, vituperation, and vulgarity.

Sir James Graham is not mentioned nearly so often as Brougham, but in respect of concentrated hostility of criticism he occupies the first place amongst _Punch's_ pet aversions. No cartoon in this period held up any politician to greater contempt and ridicule than the repulsive picture of the Home Secretary as "Peel's Dirty Little Boy," who was "always in trouble." The predominating cause of _Punch's_ resentment was the historic episode of the opening of suspect correspondence, notably that of Mazzini; but Sir James Graham could do nothing right in _Punch's_ view: _nihil tetigit quod non foedavit_. Peter Borthwick, the advocate of the slave-owners, M.P. for Evesham from 1835 to 1847, and editor of the _Morning Post_ from 1850 till his death in 1852, was no favourite of _Punch_. He was, however, as the date shows, not editorially responsible for "Jenkins"; and by introducing the Borthwick clause into the Poor Law Amendment Bill in 1847, under which married couples over the age of sixty were not, as theretofore, separated when they entered the poor-house, he so far expiated his pro-slavery heresies that _Punch_ granted him "six months immunity from ridicule for this good act." _Punch's_ antipathy to Urquhart is curious, for they were united in their Russophobia. But _Punch_ was often intolerant of competitors, and he was never an extravagant Turcophil as Urquhart was.

[Sidenote: _"Punch" Designs a Statue_]

If a paper, like a man, is to be fairly judged by its heroes and favourites, _Punch_ emerges from the test with considerable credit. Most of them have been mentioned incidentally elsewhere, and the list[33] might easily be added to. Let it suffice, however, to give the names of Jenner, Stephenson, Rowland Hill, Paxton, Faraday, and Livingstone; Mazzini and Kossuth; Jenny Lind, Florence Nightingale, and William Russell, of whose lectures _Punch_ wrote an enthusiastic and well-merited encomium in the summer of 1857.

[Footnote 33: It is perhaps worthy of note that with the exception of Paxton none of those mentioned belonged to the decorated or decorative classes. Stephenson refused a knighthood in 1850; it was not bestowed on William Russell till more than forty years later. Rowland Hill was made a K.C.B. in 1860.]

_A complete Index will be found in the Fourth Volume._

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