EGO ET MAX MEUS.

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‘How very delightful Max’s drawings are. For all their mad perspective and crude colour, they have, indeed, the sentiment of style, and they reveal with rarer delicacy than does any other record the spirit of Lloyd-George’s day.’ This sentence is not quite original: it is adapted from an eminent author because the words sum up so completely the inexpressible satisfaction following an inspection of Mr. Beerbohm’s caricatures. To-day essentially belongs to the Minister who once presided at the Board of Trade. Several attempts indeed have been made to describe the literature, art and drama of the present as ‘Edwardian,’ from a very proper and loyal spirit, to which I should be the last to object. We were even promised a few years ago a new style of furniture to inaugurate the reign—something to supplant that Louis Dix-neuviÈme dÉcor which is merely a compromise with the past. But somehow the whole thing has fallen through; in this democratic Æon the adjective ‘Edwardian’ trips on the tongue; our real dramatists are all Socialists or Radicals; our poets and writers Anarchists. Our artists are the only conservatives of intellect. Our foreign policy alone can be called ‘Edwardian,’ so personal is it to the King. Everything else is a compromise; so our time must therefore be known—at least ten years of it—as the Lloyd-Georgian period. I can imagine collectors of the future struggling for an alleged genuine work of art belonging to this brief renaissance, and the disappointment of the dealer on finding that it dated a year before the Budget, thereby reducing its value by some thousands.

Just as we go to Kneller and Lely for speaking portraits of the men who made their age, so I believe our descendants will turn to Max for listening likenesses of the present generation. Of all modern artists, he alone follows Hamlet’s advice. If the mirror is a convex one, that is merely the accident of genius, and reflects the malady of the century. Other artists have too much eye on the Uffizi and the National Gallery (the more modest of them only painting up to the Tate). In Max we have one who never harks forward to the future, and is therefore more characteristic, more Lloyd-Georgian than any of his peers. Set for one moment beside some Rubens’ goddess a portrait by Mr. Sargent, and how would she be troubled by its beauty? Not in the slightest degree; because they are both similar but differing expressions of the same genius of painting. The centuries which separate them are historical conventions; and in Art, history does not count; Æsthetically, time is of no consequence. But in the more objective art of caricature, history is of some import, and (as Mr. Beerbohm himself admitted about photographs) the man limned is of paramount importance. Actual resemblance, truthfulness of presentation, criticism of the model become legitimate subjects for consideration. Generally speaking, artists long since wisely resigned all attempts at catching a likeness, leaving to photography an inglorious victory. Mr. Beerbohm, realising this fact, seized caricature as a substitute—the consolation, it may be, for a lost or neglected talent. It is as though Watts (painter of the soul’s prism, if ever there was one) had pushed away Ward and Downey from the camera, to insert a subtler lens, a more sensitive negative.

* * * *

If, reader, you have ever been to a West-end picture shop, you will have suffered some annoyance on looking too attentively at any item in the exhibition, by the approach of an officious attendant, who presses you to purchase it. He begins by flattery; he felicitates you on your choice of the best picture in the room—the one that has been ‘universally admired by critics and collectors.’

The fact of its not being sold is due (he naÏvely confesses) to its rather high price; several offers have been submitted, and if not sold at the catalogued amount the artist has promised to consider them; but it is very unlikely that the drawing will remain long without a red ticket, ‘as people come back to town to-morrow.’ There is the stab, the stab in the back while you were drinking honey; the tragedy of Corfe Castle repeated. People with a capital P in picture-dealing circles does not mean what they call the Hoypolloy; it means the great ones of the earth, the monde, the Capulets and Montagues with wealth or rank. You have been measured by the revolting attendant. He does not count you with them, or you would not be in town to-day; something has escaped you in the Morning Post, some function to which you were not invited, or of which you knew nothing. If you happen to be a Capulet you feel mildly amused, and in order to correct the wrong impression and let the underling know your name and address you purchase the drawing; for the greatest have their weak side. But, if not, and you have simply risen from the ‘purple of commerce,’ you are determined not to lag behind stuck-up Society; you will revenge yourself for the thousand injuries of Fortunatus; you will deprive him of his prerogative to buy the best. The purchase is concluded. You go home with your nerves slightly shaken from the gloved contest—you go home to face your wife and children, wearing a look of wistful inquiry on their irregular upturned faces, as when snow lies upon the ground, they scent Christmas, and you look up with surprise at the whiteness of the ceiling. Though in private life a contributor to the press, in public I used to be one of those importunate salesmen.

It was my duty, my pleasurable duty, so to act for Mr. Beerbohm’s caricatures when exhibited at a fashionable West-end gallery where among the visitors I recognised many of his models. I observe that when Mr. Beerbohm is a friend of his victim he is generally at his best; that he is always excellent and often superb if he is in sympathy with the personality of that victim, however brutally he may render it. His failures are due to lack of sympathy, and they are often, oddly enough, the mildest as caricatures. Fortunately, Mr. Beerbohm selects chiefly celebrities who are either personal friends or those for whom he must have great admiration and sympathy. By a divine palmistry he estimates them with exquisite perception. I noted that those who were annoyed with their own caricature either did not know Mr. Beerbohm or disliked his incomparable writings; and, curiously enough, he misses the likeness in people he either does not know personally or whom you suspect he dislikes. I am glad now of the opportunity of being sincere, because it was part of my function as salesman to agree with what every one said, whether in praise or in blame.

And let me reproduce a conversation with one of the visitors. It is illustrative:—

[Scene: The Carfax Gallery; rather empty; early morning: Caricatures by Max Beerbohm; entrance one shilling. Enter Distinguished Client, takes catalogue, but does not consult it. No celebrity ever consults a catalogue in a modern picture-gallery. This does not apply to ladies, however distinguished, who conscientiously begin at number one and read out from the catalogue the title of each picture. Shopman in attendance.]

D. C. (glancing round). Yes; how very clever they are.

Shopman. Yes; they are very amusing.

D. C. I suppose you have had heaps of People. What a pity Max cannot draw!

Shopman. Yes; it is a great pity.

D. C. (examines drawing; after a pause). But he can draw. Look at that one of Althorp.

Shopman (trying to look intelligent): Yes; that certainly is well drawn.

D. C. (pointing to photograph of Paris inserted in Mr. Claude Lowther’s caricature). And how extraordinary that is. It is like one of Muirhead Bone’s street scenes. He does street scenes, doesn’t he?

Shopman. Yes; or one of Mr. Joseph Pennell’s.

D. C. (after a pause). What a pity he never gets the likeness. That’s very bad of Arthur Balfour.

Shopman. Yes; it is a great pity. No; that’s not at all a good one of Mr. Balfour.

D. C. (pointing to Mr. Shaw’s photograph inserted in caricature). But he has got the likeness there. By Jove! it’s nearly as good as a photograph.

Shopman (examining photograph as if he had never seen it; enthusiastically). It’s almost as good as a photograph.

D. C. (pointing with umbrella to Lord Weardale). Of course, that’s Rosebery?

Shopman (nervously): Y-e-s. (Brightly changing subject.) What do you think of Mr. Sargent’s?

D. C. (now worked up). Oh! that’s very good. Yes; that’s the best of all. I see it’s sold. I should have bought that one if it hadn’t been sold. I wish Max would do a caricature of (describes a possible caricature). Tell him I suggested it; he knows me quite well (glancing round). He really is tremendous. Are they going to be published?

Shopman. Yes; by Methuen & Co. (Hastily going over to new-comer.) Yes, madam, that is Mr. Arthur Balfour; it’s considered the best caricature in the exhibition—the likeness is so particularly striking; and as a pure piece of draughtsmanship it is certainly the finest drawing in the room. No; that’s not so good of Lord Althorp, though it was the first to sell. (Turning to another client.) Yes, sir; he is Mr. Beerbohm Tree’s half-brother.

(1907.)

To Mrs. Beerbohm.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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