[Speech of Lord Rosebery at the annual banquet of the Royal
Academy, London, May 5, 1894. Sir Frederic Leighton, President of
the Royal Academy, was in the chair, and in proposing "The Health
of Her Majesty's Ministers," to which Lord Rosebery replied, he
said: "No function could be more lofty, no problem is more complex
than the governance of our Empire, so vast and various in land and
folk as that which owns the sceptre of the Queen. No toast,
therefore, claims a more respectful reception than that to which I
now invite your cordial response--the health of the eminent
statesmen in whose hands that problem lies--Her Majesty's
Ministers. And not admiration only for high and various endowments,
but memories also of a most sparkling speech delivered twelve
months ago at this table, sharpens the gratification with which I
call for response on the brilliant statesman who heads Her
Majesty's Government, the Earl of Rosebery."]
YOUR ROYAL HIGHNESS, MY LORDS, AND GENTLEMEN: No one, I think,
can respond unmoved for the first time in such an assembly as this in
the character in which I now stand before you. You have alluded, sir, to
the speech which I delivered here last year. But I have to confess with
a feeling of melancholy that since that period I have made a change for
the worse. [Laughter.] I have had to exchange all those dreams of
imagination to which I then alluded, which are, I believe, the proper
concomitants of the Foreign Office intelligently wielded, and which, I
have no doubt, my noble friend on my right sees in imagination as I did
then--I have had to exchange all those dreams for the dreary and
immediate prose of life--all the more dreary prose because a great deal
of it is my own.
[Illustration: _LORD ROSEBERY_
(_ARCHIBALD PHILIP PRIMROSE_)
_Photogravure after a photograph from life_]
There is one function, however, which has already devolved upon me,
and which is not without interest for this Academy. My great
predecessor, much to my regret, left in my hands the appointment of a
successor to Sir Frederick Burton. That has cost me probably more
trouble and travail than any other act of this young administration.
[Laughter.] I have sought, and I have abundantly received, counsels, and
it is after long consideration, and with the most earnest and
conscientious desire to do not what is most agreeable to individuals
themselves, but what is best for art in general, that I have nominated
Mr. Poynter to succeed Sir Frederick Burton. [Cheers.]
I have at the same time made a change in the minute relating to the
conditions of that post, which to a greater extent than was formerly the
case associates the trustees of the National Gallery in the work of
selection with the new director. The trustees have been hitherto rather
those flies on the wheel of which we read in ancient fable. It is now
proposed to make them working wheels, and to make them work well and
co-operatively with the new director. ["Hear! Hear!"] I hope that this
arrangement will be satisfactory in its results. But, Mr. President, I
have long thought, as an individual, that the task of a Minister or of a
Government in co-operating with the Royal Academy, and with those who
have art at heart, ought not to end with a mere appointment of this
description. I take a larger view of the responsibilities of my office,
and I should be glad to offer to you with great respect a few
suggestions that have recently occurred to me with regard to the present
position of English art, which I regard with some misgivings.
There is, first, the subject of portraiture. I am deeply concerned for
the future condition of portrait-painting. It is not, as you may
imagine, with any distrust whatever of those distinguished men who take
a part in that branch of art; it is much more for the subjects that I am
concerned. [Laughter.] And it is not so much with the subjects as with
that important part of the subject which was illustrated in the famous
work "Sartor Resartus," by the great Carlyle, that I chiefly trouble
myself. How can it be that any man should make a decent portrait of his
fellow-man in these days? No one can entertain so vindictive a hatred of
his fellow-creature as to wish to paint him in the costume in which I
am now addressing you. [Laughter.] I believe that that costume is
practically dropped for all purposes of portraiture; and if that be so,
in what costume is the Englishman of the present century to descend to
remotest posterity through the vehicle of the gifted artists whom I see
around me? We are not all sufficiently fortunate to be the Chancellor of
the University. [Laughter and cheers.] We have not always even the happy
chance to be a municipal dignitary, with a costume which I will not at
present characterize. [Laughter.] We are not all of us masters of
hounds; and I think that the robes of a peer, unattractive in their
æsthetic aspect, have lost something of their popularity. [Laughter.]
Again, the black velvet coat, with which we are accustomed to associate
deep thought and artistic instincts, has become a little faded.
[Laughter.]
I am told, and told four or five times every day in speeches delivered
in various parts of the country, that I have no right to offer a
criticism without offering a suggestive remedy. Well, Sir Frederic, I am
prepared to offer my remedy for what it is worth, and for that reason I
ask your co-operation. Why should not a committee of the Royal Academy
gather together in order to find some chaste and interesting national
costume, in which the distinguished men of the nineteenth century might
descend to posterity without the drawbacks which I have pointed out?
Robespierre had such a costume designed, and other great sumptuary
legislators have had the same idea in their minds; and I would not push
the suggestion so far as to imply that we should be compelled to wear
this costume in ordinary life. It might be one kept to gratify the
artistic instincts of those to whom we sit. [Laughter.] And I will make
a practical suggestion by which this costume--when you, sir, have
selected it--might be associated with the ordinary run of life. It might
be made an official costume of a justice of the peace, and in that way
the great mass of our fellow-countrymen, with only a few and
insignificant exceptions, of whom I am one, might descend to remotest
posterity in a graceful, becoming, and official costume. [Laughter.]
I pass on from that, because I should not limit myself to portraiture in
a great survey of this kind; and I may say that I am seriously concerned
for the prospects of landscape painting in this country. I have of late
been doing a great deal of light travelling in behalf of the respectable
firm which I represent [laughter], and I beg at once to give notice, in
the hearing of the noble marquis who is more to your left [Lord
Salisbury], that I now nail to the counter any proposal to call me a
political bagman as wanting in originality and wit. [Laughter.]
But I have been doing a certain amount of light travelling in behalf of
our excellent and creditable firm. The other day, on returning from
Manchester, I was deeply and hideously impressed with the fact that all
along that line of railway which we traversed, the whole of a pleasing
landscape was entirely ruined by appeals to the public to save their
constitutions but ruin their æsthetic senses by a constant application
of a particular form of pill. [Laughter and cheers.]
Now, Sir Frederic, I view that prospect with the gravest misgiving. What
is to become of our English landscape if it is to be simply a sanitary
or advertising appliance? [Laughter.] I appeal to my right honorable
friend the Chancellor of the Duchy [James Bryce], who sits opposite to
me. His whole heart is bound up in a proposition for obtaining free
access to the mountains of the Highlands. But what advantage will it be
to him, or to those whose case he so justly and eloquently espouses, if
at the top of Schiehallion, or any other mountain which you may have in
your mind's eye, the bewildered climber can only find an advertisement
of some remedy of the description of which I have mentioned [cheers], an
advertisement of a kind common, I am sorry to say, in the United
States--and I speak with reverence in the presence of the ambassador of
that great community--but it would be in the Highlands distressing to
the deer and infinitely perplexing even to the British tourist.
[Laughter and cheers.]
But I turned my eyes mentally from the land, and I said that, after all,
the great painter of the present may turn to the sea, and there at least
he is safe. There are effects on the ocean which no one can ruin, which
not even a pill can impair. [Laughter.] But I was informed in
confidence--it caused me some distress--that the same enterprising firm
which has placarded our rural recesses, has offered a mainsail free of
expense to every ship that will accept it, on condition that it bears
the same hideous legend upon it to which I have referred. [Laughter.]
Think, Mr. President, of the feelings of the illustrious Turner if he
returned to life to see the luggers and the coasting ships which he has
made so glorious in his paintings, converted into a simple vehicle for
the advertisement of a quack medicine--although I will not say "quack,"
because that is actionable [laughter]--I will say of a medicine of which
I do not know the properties. [Laughter.]
But I turned my eyes beyond the land and ocean, and I turned them to the
heavens, and I said, "There, at any rate, we are safe." The painter of
the present may turn his eye from the land and ocean, but in the skies
he can always find some great effect which cannot be polluted. At this
moment I looked from the railway-carriage window, and I saw the skeleton
of a gigantic tower arising. It had apparently been abandoned at a lofty
stage, possibly in consequence of the workmen having found that they
spoke different languages at the height at which they had arrived.
[Laughter.] I made inquiries, and I found that it was the enterprise of
a great speculator, who resides himself on a mountain, and who is
equally prepared to bore under the ocean or ascend into the heavens. I
was given to understand that this admirable erection comprised all the
delights of a celestial occupation without any detachment from
terrestrial pursuits. [Laughter.] But I am bound to say that if
buildings of that kind are to cover this country, and if they are to be
joined to the advertising efforts to which I have alluded, neither
earth, nor sea, nor sky in Great Britain will be fit subject for any
painter. [Cheers.]
What, then, is the part of Her Majesty's Government in this critical and
difficult circumstance? We have--no, I will not say we have, because
there would be a protest on the left--but different governments have
added allotments to the attractions of rural neighborhoods. I venture to
think that an allotment is not an unpicturesque thing. Certainly, small
holdings are more picturesque than large holdings, but I do not say that
from the point of view in which Sydney Smith said that the difference
between the picturesque and the beautiful was that the rector's horse
was beautiful, and that the curate's horse was picturesque. [Laughter.]
I simply mean that a small holding is more picturesque than a large
holding, and I think we may hope that the parish councils, if they meet,
as they did in primeval times, under the shade of some large spreading
oak, and not in the public house which we so much fear, as their
headquarters, may yet add a picturesque feature to the rural landscape
of Great Britain.
But there is one feature at which a government can always aim as adding
to the landscape of Great Britain. In a very famous but too little read
novel, "Pelham," by the late Lord Lytton, there is a passage which
always struck me greatly. It is where Pelham goes to see an uncle from
whom he is to inherit a great estate, and he asks what the uncle has
done to beautify that exquisite spot. The uncle says that he has done
nothing but added the most beautiful feature of landscape, which is
happy faces. Well, the Government in its immediate neighborhood has
little to do with making happy faces. [Laughter.] It certainly does not
make its opponents happy, except on rare occasions when it leaves
office, and it is not always so fortunate as to make its supporters
happy. [Laughter.] But I believe that in this country all governments do
aim in their various ways and methods at making a happy population
around them; and in that respect, in adding happy faces to the
landscape, whether we fail or whether we succeed, we have a good-will in
the work, and I am quite sure we have the hearty encouragement of the
great and brilliant assembly which I address. [Loud cheers.]