Touching the Experimental Graft of a Utilitarian Spirit upon the Aesthetic Instinct in our Sisters

I HAD strolled about the galleries of Burlington House for a couple of hours on Press Day, looking a little at pictures here and there, but for the most part contemplating with admiration the zeal and good faith of the ladies and gentlemen who stopped, note-book in hand, before every frame: when some one behind me gave a friendly tug at my sleeve. I turned, to find myself confronted by a person I seemed not to know—a small young woman in an alpine hat and a veil which masked everything about her face except its dentigerous smile. Even as I looked I was conscious of regret that, if acquaintances were to be made for me in this spontaneous fashion, destiny had not selected instead a certain tall, slender, dark young lady, clad all in black and cock’s-plumes, whom I had been watching at her work of notetaking in room after room, with growing interest. Then, peering more closely through the veil, I discovered that I was being accosted by Miss Timby-Hucks.

“You didn’t know me!” she said, with a vivacious half-giggle, as we shook hands; “and you’re not specially pleased to see me; and you’re asking yourself, ‘What on earth is she doing here?’ Now, don’t deny it!”

“Well, you know,” I made awkward response—“of course—Press day——”

“Ah, but I belong to the Press,” said Miss Timby-Hucks.

“Happy Press! And since when?”

“O it’s nearly a fortnight now. And most interesting I find the work. You know, for a long time now I’ve been so restless, so anxious to find some opening to a real career, where I might be my genuine self, and be an active part of the great whirling stream of existence, and concentrate my mind upon the actualities of life—don’t you yourself think it will be just the thing for me?”

“Undoubtedly,” I replied without hesitation. “And do you find focussing yourself on the actualities—ah—remunerative?”

“Well,” Miss Timby-Hucks explained, “nothing of mine has been printed yet, you see, so that I don’t know as to that. But I am assured it will be all right. You see, I’m very intimate with a cousin of Mrs Umpelbaum, who is the wife of the proprietor of Maida Vale, and in that way it came about. Lady-reporters never have any chance, I am told, unless they have friends in the proprietor’s family, or know the editor extremely well. It all goes by favour, like—like——”

“Like the dearest of all the actualities,” I put in. “But how is it they don’t print your stuff?”

“I haven’t written any, as yet. The difficulty was to find a subject,” Miss Timby-Hucks rejoined. “O that awful ‘subject’! I thought and thought and thought till my head was fit to burst. I went to see Mrs Umpelbaum herself, and asked her to suggest something. You know she writes a great deal for the paper herself. She said they hadn’t had any ‘Reminiscences of Carlyle’ now for some weeks; but afterwards she agreed with me that would not be quite the thing for one to begin with. She couldn’t suggest anything else, except that I should have a chat with my dressmaker. Very often in that way, she said, lady-reporters get the most entertaining revelations of gossip in high life. But it happened that just then it was not—not exactly convenient—for me to call upon my dressmaker; and so that suggestion came to nothing, too.”

“I had no idea lady-journalism was so difficult,” I remarked, with sympathy.

“O indeed, yes!” Miss Timby-Hucks went on. “One can’t expect to be en rapport, as we journalists say, with Society, without spending a great deal of money. There is one lady-reporter, Mrs Umpelbaum told me, who has made quite a leading position for herself, solely through hairdressers and American dentists. But I don’t mind admitting that that would involve more of an outlay than I could afford, just at the moment.”

“So you never got a subject?” I asked.

“Yes; finally I did. I was over at the Grundys’, telling my troubles, and Uncle Dudley—you know, being so much with the girls, I always call him that—Uncle Dudley said that the fashionable thing now was interviews, and that lady-journalists did this better than gentlemen-reporters because they had more nerve. By that I suppose he meant a more delicate nervous organisation, quicker to grasp and absorb fine shades of character. But that hardly helped me, because whom was I to interview, and about what? That was the question! But Uncle Dudley thought a moment, and was ready with a suggestion. Everything depended, he said, upon making a right start. I must pick out a personality and a theme at once non-contentious and invested with popular interest His idea was that I should begin by interviewing Mr T. M. Healy on ‘The Decline of the Deep-Sea Mock-Turtle Fisheries on the West Coast of Ireland.’ If I could get Mr Healy to talk frankly on this subject, he felt sure that I should chain public attention at a bound.”

“Superb!” I cried. “And did you do it?”

“No,” Miss Timby-Hucks confessed; “I went to the House and sent in my card, but it was another Irish Member who came out to see me—I think his name was Mulhooly. He was very polite, and explained that since some recent sad event in one of the Committee Rooms, fifteen I think its number was, it was the rule of his party that, when a lady sent in a card to one Member, some other Member answered it. It prevented confusion, he said, and was not in antagonism to the expressed views of the Church.”

“Talking of nothing,” I said, leading the way over to a divan, on which we seated ourselves: “you seem to have finally secured a subject. I assume you are doing the Academy for Maida Vale.”

“Yes,” replied Miss Timby-Hucks with gentle firmness; “you might say I have done it. I have been here since the very minute the doors opened, and I’ve gone twelve times round. I wish I could have seen you earlier. I should so like to have had your opinion of the various works as we passed.”

“It is better not,” I commented. “There are ladies present.”

The lady-reporter looked at me for a furtive instant dubiously. Then she smiled a little under her veil. “You do say such odd things!” she remarked. “I am glad to see that a great many ladies are present. It shows how we are securing our proper recognition in journalism. I believe there are actually more of us here than there are gentlemen-reporters—I should say gentle-men-critics. And it is the same in art, too. You can see—I’ve counted them up in my catalogue here—there are this year two hundred and forty-four lady-artists exhibiting in this Academy three hundred and forty-six works of art. Think of that! Fifty of them are described as Mrs, and there are one hundred and ninety-four who are unmarried.”

“Think of that!” I retorted.

“And there are among them,” Miss Timby-Hucks went on, “one Marchioness, one Countess, one Baroness, and one plain Lady. I am going to begin my article with this. I think it will be interesting, don’t you?”

“I’d be careful not to particularise about the plain Lady,” I suggested. “That might be too interesting.”

She was over-full of her subject to smile. “No, I mean,” she said, “as showing how the ranks of British Art are being filled from the very highest classes, and are appealing more and more to the female intellect. I don’t believe it will occur to any one else to count up in the catalogue. So that will be original with me—to enlighten my sex as to the glorious part they play in this year’s Academy.”

“But have you seen their pictures?” I asked, repressing an involuntary groan.

“Every one!” replied Miss Timby-Hucks. “They are all good. There isn’t what I should call a bad one—that is, a Frenchy or immoral one—among them. I shall say that, too, in my criticism; but of course I shall have to word it carefully, because I fancy Mr Umpelbaum is a foreigner of some sort—and you know they’re all so sensitive about the superiority of British Art.”

“It is their nature; they can’t help it,” I pointed out. “They try their best, however, to master these unworthy emotions. Sometimes, indeed, their dissimulation reaches a really high plane of endeavour.”

“They have nothing at all on the Continent like our Royal Academy, I am told,” said Miss Timby-Hucks. “That isn’t generally known, is it? I had thought of saying it.”

“It will be a safe statement,” I assured her. “You might go further, and assert that no other country at any stage of its history has had anything like the Royal Academy. It is the unique blossom of British civilisation.”

Miss Timby-Hucks seemed to like the phrase, and made a note of it on the back of her catalogue. “Yes,” she continued, “I thought of making my criticism general, dealing with things like that. But I’ve got some awfully interesting figures to put in. For example, there are sixty-eight Academicians and Associates exhibiting: they have one hundred and thirty-five oil paintings, sixteen water-colour or black-and-white drawings, eight architectural designs, and twenty-three pieces of sculpture—a total of one hundred and eighty-two works of art, or two and sixty-seven hundredths each. I got at that by dividing the total number of works by the total number of Academicians. Do you think any one else will be likely to print that first in a daily paper? Mrs Umpelbaum told me that Maida Vale made a special point of new facts. I don’t think I shall say much about the pictures themselves. What is there to say about pictures by the Academicians? As I told mamma this morning, they wouldn’t be Academicians if they didn’t paint good pictures, would they? and good pictures speak for themselves. Of course, I shall describe the subjects of Sir Frederic’s pictures—by the way, what is a Hesperides?—and some of the others: I’ll get you to pick out for me a few leading names. But I shall make my main point the splendid advance of lady-artists—I heard some one say in the other room there’d never been half so many before—and the elevating effect this has upon British Art. In fact, mightn’t I say that is what makes British Art what it is to-day?”

“It is one of the reasons, undoubtedly,” I assented, as I rose. “There are others, however.”

“Ees, I know,” said Miss Timby-Hucks: “the diffusion of Christian principles amongst us, our high national morality, and the sanctity of the English home. Mrs Albert said only last night that these lay at the very foundation of British art.”

“Mrs Albert is a woman of discernment,” I said, making a gesture of farewell.

But Miss Timby-Hucks on the instant thought of something. Her eyes glistened, her two upper front teeth gleamed. “O, it’s just occurred to me!” she exclaimed, moving nearer to my side, and speaking-in confidential excitement. “I know now how that lady-reporter manages with the hairdressers and dentists. She doesn’t pay them money at all. She mentions their names in the papers instead. How dull of me not to have thought of that before! Why—yes—I will!—I’ll put my dressmaker among the Private View celebrities!”

One likes to be civil to people who are obviously going to succeed in the world. I forthwith took Miss Timby-Hucks out to luncheon.