“One goes to the Academy in self-defence,” said
Reginald. “It is the one topic one has in common with the
Country Cousins.”
“It is almost a religious observance with them,” said
the Other. “A kind of artistic Mecca, and when the good
ones die they go---”
“To the Chantrey Bequest. The mystery is what they
find to talk about in the country.”
“There are two subjects of conversation in the country:
Servants, and Can fowls be made to pay? The first, I
believe, is compulsory, the second optional.”
“As a function,” resumed Reginald, “the Academy is a
failure.”
“You think it would be tolerable without the pictures?”
“The pictures are all right, in their way; after all, one
can always look at them if one is bored with one's
surroundings, or wants to avoid an imminent acquaintance.”
“Even that doesn't always save one. There is the
inevitable female whom you met once in Devonshire, or the
Matoppo Hills, or somewhere, who charges up to you with the
remark that it's funny how one always meets people one knows
at the Academy. Personally, I don't think it funny.”
“I suffered in that way just now,” said Reginald
plaintively, “from a woman whose word I had to take that
she had met me last summer in Brittany.”
“I hope you were not too brutal?”
“I merely told her with engaging simplicity that the art
of life was the avoidance of the unattainable.”
“Did she try and work it out on the back of her catalogue?”
“Not there and then. She murmured something about being
`so clever.' Fancy coming to the Academy to be clever!”
“To be clever in the afternoon argues that one is dining
nowhere in the evening.”
“Which reminds me that I can't remember whether I
accepted an invitation from you to dine at Kettner's
tonight.”
“On the other hand, I can remember with startling
distinctness not having asked you to.”
“So much certainty is unbecoming in the young; so we'll
consider that settled. What were you talking about? Oh,
pictures. Personally, I rather like them; they are so
refreshingly real and probable, they take one away from the
unrealities of life.”
“One likes to escape from oneself occasionally.”
“That is the disadvantage of a portrait; as a rule, one's
bitterest friends can find nothing more to ask than the
faithful unlikeness that goes down to posterity as oneself.
I hate posterity---it's so fond of having the last word. Of
course, as regards portraits, there are exceptions.”
“For instance?”
“To die before being painted by Sargent is to go to
heaven prematurely.”
“With the necessary care and impatience, you may avoid
that catastrophe.”
“If you're going to be rude,” said Reginald, “I shall
dine with you tomorrow night as well. The chief vice of the
Academy,” he continued, “is its nomenclature. Why, for
instance, should an obvious trout-stream with a palpable
rabbit sitting in the foreground be called `an evening dream
of unbeclouded peace,' or something of that sort?”
“You think,” said the Other, “that a name should
economize description rather than stimulate imagination?”
“Properly chosen, it should do both. There is my lady
kitten at home, for instance; I've called it Derry.”
“Suggests nothing to my imagination but protracted sieges
and religious animosities. of course, I don't know your
kitten---”
“Oh, you're silly. It's a sweet name, and it answers to
it---when it wants to. Then, if there are any unseemly
noises in the night, they can be explained succinctly: Derry
and Toms.”
“You might almost charge for the advertisement. But as
applied to pictures, don't you think your system would be
too subtle, say, for the Country Cousins?”
“Every reformation must have its victims. You can't
expect the fatted calf to share the enthusiasm of the angels
over the prodigals return. Another darling weakness of the
Academy is that none of its luminaries must `arrive' in a
hurry. You can see them coming for years, like a Balkan
trouble or a street improvement, and by the time they have
painted a thousand or so square yards of canvas, their work
begins to be recognized.”
“Some one who Must Not be Contradicted said that a man
must be a success by the time he's thirty, or never.”
“To have reached thirty,” said Reginald, “is to have
failed in life.”