Apropos of illustrations and illustrators, I should like to ask what
is the merit or meaning of that peculiar interpretation of nature
which consists in representing men and women with white clothing
and black faces and hands. I do not say that it is not sufficiently
realistic—that it is too conventional; I only “want to know.” I
should like to know, too, if in illustrating, say, a football match
in Ujiji the gentlemen addicted to that method here would show the
players in black clothing, with white faces and hands? Or in default of
clothing would they be shown white all over? If anybody can endarken
my lightness on this subject I shall be glad to hear from him. I am
groping in a noonday of doubt and plunged in a gulf of white despair.
Possibly these pictures are called silhouettes—I have heard them called
so. Possibly if they were silhouettes they would be acceptable, for the
genius of a Kanewka may lift the spectator above such considerations
as right and left in the matter of legs and arms. But they are not
silhouettes; the faces and hands are in shadow, the clothing in light.
The figures are like Tennyson’s lotus eaters: “between the sun and
moon”; the former has power upon the skin only, the latter upon the
apparel. The spectator is supposed to be upon the same side as the
moon. That is where the artist is. He draws the figures, the moon draws
him, and I draw a veil over the affecting scene.