end who had painted the original. Other R.A.'s, who
went about pooh-poohing the whole affair, and saying that they intended
to ignore it altogether, turned up nevertheless in due time at the
Gainsborough, where, it is true, they did not generally remain very
long. They had not come to see the Exhibition, but only their own
pictures. One glance was usually enough, and then they vanished. The
critics (and their friends) of course remained longer. Even Mr. Sala
went in one day and seemed to be immensely tickled by what he saw.
Strange to relate, however, when he had passed through about one-third
of the show, he was observed to stop abruptly, turn himself round, and
flee away incontinently, never to be seen there again. I was much
puzzled to discover a reason for this remarkable man[oe]uvre, the more
so as at that time I had not wounded his _amour propre_ by indulging in
an "Artistic Joke" of much more diminutive proportions at his expense,
or, as it subsequently turned out, at my own. Since, however, the
world-famous trial of _Sala_ v. _Furniss_ I have looked carefully over
all the pictures in my Royal Academy, with a view to throwing some light
upon the critic's abrupt departure. I remain, nevertheless, in the dark,
for the most rigid scrutiny has failed to reveal to me one single
feature in the show, not even a Grecian nose, or a foot with six toes,
which could have jarred upon the refined taste of the most sensitive of
journalists. I shall return to Mr. Sala in another portion of these
confessions, but am more concerned now with the parasites, the artistic
failures, the common showmen, the traffickers in various wares, and
other specimens of more or less impecunious humanity, who applied to me
to let them participate in the profits of a success which I had toiled
so hard to achieve. In imitation of Barnum, I might have had, if I had
been so inclined, a series of side shows, ranging in kind from the big
diamond which a well-known firm in Bond Street asked me to let them
exhibit, to the "Queen's Bears" and a curious waxwork of a bald old man
which by means of electricity showed the gradual alterations of tint
produced by the growth of intemperance. One of these applications I was
for a moment inclined to entertain. It has more than once been proposed
that to enable the British public to take its annual bolus at Burlington
House with less nausea, the Royal Academy should introduce a band of
some sort, so that under the infl