good lady on her next birthday; and his good lady called on the sculptor and his wife at the studio, promiscuously, as she had done on the Spratts, and was so delighted with what she saw there, that she instantly dropped a fair Ethiopian ventriloquist, who could perform in five distinct South African dialects, and took up this young American couple instead, and invited them to a "small-and-early" at her house in Belgrave Square.
And there they had a success in the tableau vivant line that completely eclipsed that of the Spratts the year before, and the lovely Galatea Minnow became the fashion more suddenly, if possible, than Mrs. Spratt had done. And from that moment Mrs. Spratt might consider that her brief reign was over, and that she was for ever deposed from the throne of beauty.
Not that she abdicated without a struggle. The throne of beauty is wide enough for two, it seems; and two pretty women sitting close together, and thus publicly sunning themselves
"In the broad glare that beats upon a throne,"
make a much more edifying sight than only one. But the contest was soon decided in favour of the sculptor's wife. For although that omniscient Brother of the Brush (who had asserted that no such pretty woman as Mrs. Spratt had been seen for four hundred years) came forward with another assertion, namely, that Mrs. Spratt was anatomically finer than Mrs. Minnow, and would make a far more perfect skeleton, another lynx-eyed son of Apelles discovered that Mrs. Minnow's foot, although larger than Mrs. Spratt's, was constructed on truer artistic principles—more Greek, in fact; whereas Mrs. Spratt's, however fascinating to the Philistines, was rather Roman than Greek, and belonged to a later and somewhat degraded period of Art. So Mrs. Minnow, with her classical foot, won the day, and was the talk of Clubs and dinner parties throughout the length and breadth of the land; and Mrs. Spratt and her tootsicum were nowhere! Sic transit gloria mundi!
"Le reine est mort! vive le reine!" said his light-hearted old Grace the Duke of Pentonville, who was very proud of his perfect French; and the mot, coming from him, made quite a furore.
Jack was also destined to be unsuccessful this year. He had sent eight life-sized Sock-darners (with large landscape backgrounds) to the Royal Academy, with a short but perfectly polite note to the effect that he wished them to be hung all together in the large room, No. III., on the line, with sufficient space left between them to prevent their interfering with each other, and no other pictures hung above or below. There was also a postscript, mildly but firmly intimating that if these conditions were not complied with to the letter, he should feel bound for the future (in justice to himself) to exhibit his pictures in a private Gallery of his own, instead of sending them to the Royal Academy.
At the same time he displayed his tact by inviting the ten members of the Academy Council for the year to a banquet at Richmond, to meet two Viscounts, six Guardsmen, and an eminent Art-Critic. Previous engagements, it is true, prevented the ten Academicians from accepting this invitation; and as for the Art-Critic, he never even answered Jack's hospitable note. The Viscounts and Guardsmen alone accepted; but they never came.
So that the repast, though a sumptuous, was a lonely one.
Well, to his utter surprise and bitter mortification, the eight Sock-darners were rejected, without even so much as a line to explain why!
Nor would the dealers, great or small, have anything to do with those eight great Sock-darners; they had too many of Jack's wares on their hands already. Nor would the British Public; not at any price whatever.
To improve matters, and to pass the time, J. S. took to writing his views on Academicians, and dealers, and the British Public (and very strong views they were) in smart little pamphlets which he published at his own expense, and very liberally forwarded free of charge (and without previous application being made for the same).
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