The newspaper reports of the Academy dinner lay before me, with its small list of distinguished statesmen, its long bead-roll of Titled Nobodies who never bought a picture or gave a commission to a painter; its absence of every one of the distinguished artists by rare chance assembled in London; its ignoring of foreign letters, and its scanty recognition of the respect due to native literature; its utter passing by of the claims of the Sister Arts--Music and the Drama; the fulsome fulness of its laudations of all who can influence its fortunes by favour; its sycophancy of rank and title and outward influence, and that in the face of a series of cool contemptuous disclaimers of all knowledge or interest in Art by the men before whom in succession the Academic speaker knocked his forehead on the ground; and lastly, as if to sum up in one unmeaning act the stupid snobbishness that marks the whole of this Academic entertainment, the toast of "Literature and its prospects and influences on Art" relegated to the very end of the feast, when every other institution which it can enter into the heart of a respectful and awe-stricken Academician to bow down to has been honoured, and when the lordly guests whom the bad dinner has disagreed with, or the President's eloquence has bored, have left the spaces at the tables, lately filled by their august heads, vacant.
[Footnote 33: Another Charles Eastlake, the namesake and nephew of the P.R.A., for many years contributed art-criticism to _Punch_ over the signature "Jack Easel," but was clearly free from the suspicion of family bias.]
SITTER: "Oh, I think this position will do; it's natural and easy."
PHOTOGRAPHER: "Ah, that may do in ordinary life, ma'am; but in photography it's out of the question entirely!"]
The Royal Academy has, in many respects, reformed itself out of all recognition as the institution which provoked and justified this explosion. It is only one of the many evidences which go to prove how much more than a merely comic journal _Punch_ was that he should have contributed as damaging an attack as was ever penned against the principles and policy of the R.A. in the days when it laid itself most open to criticism.
There are not many events in the art world in the 'sixties dealt with in so serious a vein. When Frith's _Railway Station_ was purchased in 1863 for £20,000 by a Mr. Flatou, _Punch_ contented himself with calling the purchaser a "Flatou Magico." There are friendly and well-merited memorial notices of John Phillip, R.A., in 1867, and of Alexander Munro, the Scottish sculptor, in 1871, while in 1870 _Punch_ supported the appeal for funds to put up a tombstone to George Cattermole, who died poor.