Artists' General Benevolent Fund Anniversary Festival 1862
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He believed, he said, that it was pretty generally understood that there was probably nothing more easily done in this world than to spend one’s money, excepting it was to spend the money of other people. However, he was happy, so far as the institution for which he had the honour and satisfaction to appeal, to say that as far as it was concerned, it had attained such a degree of perfection that its promoters and supporters deemed the spending properly the money placed at their disposal an object of the highest importance. It was also an object of the first importance, looking at any institution, to know what were the costs of its administration. When such an institution was founded in the great name of Benevolence; and when men had to deal with the large sums of money so often contributed with such ready hands, and with such unlimited generosity, towards the relief of distress – and oftentimes, mayhap, of misery – it became more than ever essential to be assured that such money was faithfully expended, and not diverted into other channels than those for which it was legitimately designed. In any other case, though flowing knee-deep with all the cardinal virtues, and chin-deep with all the gentilities and respectabilities, and with all the red and blue books that were ever published, it would but be like the unhappy man on whom a verdict was delivered, ‘found drowned’.
Six or seven years ago when he had occasion on certain and sufficient grounds consistent with the dignity and independence of what he might term his own art, to look about for encouragement and example among institutions connected with the sister arts (yet with no possible reference to this order – having no glance whatever towards this occasion – no conceivable motive for giving on other than just grounds one a preference over the other) he must say that he pointed out as a model this institution. He had shown how modestly, how sincerely, how economically it was managed – how well its conductors dealt with the trusts admitted to their hands, and how in every way honourably they discharged their responsibilities.
The chairman then, at some length, went into the details of the operations of the institution, contrasting its position in 1854 and 1861, and saying that he stood firm by his model with unshaken steadfastness and unabated confidence. In the past year the institution had administered, in round figures, £2,000, and distributed £1,126 among the recipients of the bounty of the charity, at a cost of something like £100; and this small sum of £100 included salaries, commissions, and a lot of other items.
He had further found that, at this moderate cost, the institution had relieved no fewer than seventy-two applicants. He would only ask them for a moment to picture to themselves what worldly reverses, what overwhelming cases of domestic distress, what affliction, what home sorrows might not have been alleviated and assuaged in such cases as those which stood marked in the records of the institution. The chairman then enumerated a list of cases in point, without mentioning names, which fully bore out his remarks.
Such, he went on, were the merits of the institution to which, in the forty-seventh year of its age, he had to ask them to drink health, wealth, and length of life – an institution having no other recorded fame than that which appeared in noble characters in its printed descriptions of itself – Mercy and Distress constituting the claims on its Benevolence.
He then went on to address, as he said, the two classes present – those who were artists, and those who were not – and he did so in the name and for the sake of Art. For being, if he might be permitted to say so, somewhat of an artist himself, he had some claim to be related to the family, and certainly had always very sensitive feelings in reference to the honour of the family name. To those gentlemen present who were not artists he must beg respectfully to say – addressing them in the name of Art – he could not, and did not, stoop to ask for charity. In the ordinary and popular signification of that word in England – where it was almost as strongly illustrated as the term Art itself – he could, in the place where he was addressing them, have nothing whatever to do; but in its broader and wider signification he thought it might most aptly and fitly be associated indeed with Art.
There had been, and perhaps were, those of certain conventional ideas, who present Art as a mere child: a poor moon-striken creature unable to take care of itself waiting as it were, to be safely conducted over the great crossings of life by some professional sweepers; as a miserable, slovenly slattern, down-at-heel and out-at-elbows, with no appreciation of the value of a home, no knowledge whatever of the value of money – and so on; but with these popular and still lingering hallucinations he had nothing whatever to do. He altogether renounced them. He represented the artist in a widely different light. Yes! as a reasonable creature; a sensible, practical, responsible gentlemen; as one quite as well acquainted with the value of his own time and money as though he were ‘on high “Change”, every day; as steadfast and methodical as if he had even a Bank or Life-office of his own to attend to; who lived in a house as well as others who were not artists; who enjoyed the pleasures of his wife, and home, and children, as other men; the former of whom not only attended properly to the ordinary matters of dress and curling of hair but, in short, was usually to be found marked by an association with a decorous amount of drapery. On the other hand he presented the artist as one to whom the finest and frailest of the five senses was essential to the achievement of every business of his life. He could not gain wealth or fame by buying something he never touched or saw, or selling to another man something he might never touch or see. No! he must strike out of himself every spark of the fire which warmed and lighted – aye, and perhaps consumed him. He must win the great battle of life with his own hands and by his own eyes, and he could not choose but be in the hot encounter, General Commander-in-Chief, Captain, Ensign, non-commissioned-officer, private, drummer, all, in one short word, in his own unaided self.
This, was the artist. But he might be at times a self-deluded man, a man mistaken in his own views and judgements, and he might at times be pursuing some phantom which lured him to unsuccessful ends. Or he might be an unfortunate man simply in being in a position in which he was unable to adapt himself to the prevailing taste of his times. Or, for instance, he might be an engraver, whose work for popular approval was necessarily hard and slow – and for which, by the way, he was not always munificently paid – and which was not usually recommended by the faculty either for improving the eye or opening the chest. Or again, it might be that he was merely but a humble teacher of drawing, whose business it was to infuse into the rising generation a better appreciation of the labours of more richly gifted men; or one of those merely manual workers in the lower walks of Art, whose existence was necessary still, in a greater or less degree, to the furtherance of that Art, albeit he might only be a little rill, tributary –as it were – to the great broad ocean of genius. Still he presented him as the Artist, and still he could not be led to lay his honour or his calling at the foot of any man. He asked for help from without for the fund not as alms-giving, not as propping up a mere cripple: he asked it as part payment of a debt which all civilized men owed to Art. He asked it as a mark of respect, as a decoration not a badge, as a remembrance of what this land would be without Art, and its inseparability from the best and purest enjoyments, all along the journey down to the fast-flowing river that had brought them all there, a very long way from those well remembered pictures in their childhoods’ story-books, which none of them, as children, could ever read again.
The chairman next addressed a few words to those who were Artists. He said that it must be to them a very gratifying and cheering fact that the institution, in which they were undoubtedly so much interested, was so nobly supported by men who were themselves distinguished Artists. Having mentioned the name of Mr. Jones in connexion with this point, the chairman also referred to the published statistics of the institution, and remarked in eulogistic terms on the liberal and generous manner in which its patrons had supported it. The presence of the distinguished and experienced gentlemen who sat around him, as well as others who were present in that room, was indeed an encouragement to artists never to be ashamed of the honest struggles which belonged to their calling; while at the same time it most emphatically, and even affectionately, entreated them to forget the station of others. It was no small satisfaction to him to be able to direct their attention to this gratifying circumstance – that even some of those who had once accepted help from its funds now held up their heads with pride, because they were enrolled among the subscribers to its funds.
In conclusion he would say one word to the more young artists; and that was to counsel them not to deceive themselves in the first flush of youth and hope by the notion that they should never want help. They might; and their great duty would be to provide for such a contingency during the days of their competency.