"Silly or clever," he said, "they are all possessed of the same infinite tedium. Either they say nothing, or they say everything; they are always at the two extremes, and announce themselves as dunces or blue-stockings. One wants the just medium,--the dainty commingling of simplicity and wisdom that shall yet be pure womanly,--and this is precisely the jewel 'far above rubies' that one cannot find. I've given up the search long ago, and am entirely resigned to my lot. I like women very well--I may say very much--as friends, but to take one on chance as a comrade for life! ... No, thank you!"
Such was his fixed opinion and consequent rejection of matrimony; and for the rest, he studied art and literature and became an authority on both; so much so that on one occasion he kept a goodly number of people away from visiting the Royal Academy Exhibition, he having voted it a "disgrace to Art."
"English artists occupy the last grade in the whole school of painting," he had said indignantly, with that decisive manner of his which somehow or other carried conviction, . . "The very Dutch surpass them; and instead of trying to raise their standard, each year sees them grovelling in lower depths. The Academy is becoming a mere gallery of portraits, painted to please the caprices of vain men and women, at a thousand or two thousand guineas apiece; ugly portraits, too, woodeny portraits, utterly uninteresting portraits of prosaic nobodies. Who cares to see 'No. 154. Mrs. Flummery in her presentation-dress'.. except Mrs. Flummery's own particular friends? ... or '283. Miss Smox, eldest daughter of Professor A. T. Smox,' or '516. Baines Bryce, Esq.'? ... Who IS Baines Bryce? ... Nobody ever heard of him before. He may be a retired pork-butcher for all any one knows! Portraits, even of celebrities, are a mistake. Take Algernon Charles Swinburne, for instance, the man who, when left to himself, writes some of the grandest lines in the English language, HE had his portrait in the Academy, and everybody ran away from it, it was such an unutterable hideous disappointment. It was a positive libel of course, . . Swinburne has fine eyes and a still finer brow, but instead of idealizing the POET in him, the silly artist painted him as if he had no more intellectual distinction than a bill- sticker! ... English art! ... pooh! ... don't speak to me about it! Go to Spain, Italy, Bavaria--see what THEY can do, and then say a Miserere for the sins of the R A's!"
Thus he would talk, and his criticisms carried weight with a tolerably large circle of influential and wealthy persons, who when they called upon him, and saw the perfection of his house and the rarity of his art collections, came at once to the conclusion that it would be wise, as well as advantageous to themselves, to consult him before purchasing pictures, books, statues, or china, so that he occupied the powerful position of being able with a word to start an artist's reputation or depreciate it, as he chose,--a distinction he had not desired, and which was often a source of trouble to him, because there were so few, so very few, whose work he felt he could conscientiously approve and encourage. He was eminently good-natured and sympathetic; he would not give pain to others without being infinitely more pained himself; and yet, for all his amiability, there was a stubborn instinct in him which forbade him to promote, by word or look, the fatal nineteenth century spread of mediocrity. Either a thing must be truly great and capable of being measured by the highest standards, or for him it had no value. This rule he carried out in all branches of art,--except his own 'cello-playing. That was NOT great,--that would never be great,--but it was his pet pastime; he chose it in preference to the billiards, betting, and bar-lounging that make up the amusements of the majority of the hopeful manhood of London, and, as has already been said, he never inflicted it upon others.