The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 | Page 8

impending butchery which were passing in my
terrified mind. But he only laughed. "You will disturb their digestions,
my dear Furniss, some other way," he said, "than by providing them
with a pièce de résistance. Make your mind easy, for we are only here
to do honour to the guests. This is the banqueting night of the Royal

Academy."
From what I heard, some amusing incidents occurred in the house at
my "Royal Academy."
[Illustration: "AN ARTISTIC JOKE."
A portion of my parody of the work of Sir Alma Tadema, R.A.]
It was no uncommon sight to see the friends and relatives, even the
sons and daughters, of certain well-known Academicians standing
opposite the parody of a particular picture, and hugely enjoying it at the
expense of the parent or friend who had painted the original. Other
R.A.'s, who went about pooh-poohing the whole affair, and saying that
they intended to ignore it altogether, turned up nevertheless in due time
at the Gainsborough, where, it is true, they did not generally remain
very long. They had not come to see the Exhibition, but only their own
pictures. One glance was usually enough, and then they vanished. The
critics (and their friends) of course remained longer. Even Mr. Sala
went in one day and seemed to be immensely tickled by what he saw.
Strange to relate, however, when he had passed through about one-third
of the show, he was observed to stop abruptly, turn himself round, and
flee away incontinently, never to be seen there again. I was much
puzzled to discover a reason for this remarkable man[oe]uvre, the more
so as at that time I had not wounded his amour propre by indulging in
an "Artistic Joke" of much more diminutive proportions at his expense,
or, as it subsequently turned out, at my own. Since, however, the
world-famous trial of Sala v. Furniss I have looked carefully over all
the pictures in my Royal Academy, with a view to throwing some light
upon the critic's abrupt departure. I remain, nevertheless, in the dark,
for the most rigid scrutiny has failed to reveal to me one single feature
in the show, not even a Grecian nose, or a foot with six toes, which
could have jarred upon the refined taste of the most sensitive of
journalists. I shall return to Mr. Sala in another portion of these
confessions, but am more concerned now with the parasites, the artistic
failures, the common showmen, the traffickers in various wares, and
other specimens of more or less impecunious humanity, who applied to
me to let them participate in the profits of a success which I had toiled

so hard to achieve. In imitation of Barnum, I might have had, if I had
been so inclined, a series of side shows, ranging in kind from the big
diamond which a well-known firm in Bond Street asked me to let them
exhibit, to the "Queen's Bears" and a curious waxwork of a bald old
man which by means of electricity showed the gradual alterations of
tint produced by the growth of intemperance. One of these applications
I was for a moment inclined to entertain. It has more than once been
proposed that to enable the British public to take its annual bolus at
Burlington House with less nausea, the Royal Academy should
introduce a band of some sort, so that under the influence of its
inspiriting strains the masterpieces might be robbed of a little of their
tameness, the portrait of My Lord Knoshoo might seem less out of
place in a public Exhibition, and the insanities of certain demented
colourists might be made less obtrusive monopolists of one's attention.
Therefore, when "a musical lady and her daughters" applied to me for
permission to give "Soirées Musicales" at the Gainsborough, it struck
me for a moment that it would be effective to forestall the action of the
Academy; but on second thoughts I reflected that as the Burlington
House band would probably be of the same quality as the pictures, it
would be adhering more closely to the spirit of my "Artistic Joke" if I
gave my patrons a barrel organ or a hurdy-gurdy which should play the
"Old Hundredth" by steam. Although one would have thought that a
single visit of a few hours' duration would have sufficed to go through
a humorous Exhibition of this kind, I found that several people became
habitués of the place, and paid many visits; but it is of course possible
to have too much of a good thing, and a joke loses its point when you
have too much of it. No better illustration of this can be afforded than
in the case of my own secretary at the time, who had sat in the
Exhibition for many months. One