II

I was delighted to be told by Sleaford, whom I met one afternoon in Piccadilly, that Cyril had returned to London within the last few days.  ’He is appointed artist-in-chief of the new comic paper, The Caricaturist, said Sleaford, ’and is in great feather.  I have just been calling upon him.’

‘The very man I want to see,’ I replied.  Sleaford thereupon directed me to Cyril’s studio ‘You’ll find him at work,’ said he, ‘doin’ a caricature of Wilderspin’s great picture, “Faith and Love.”  Mother Gudgeon is sittin’ as his model.  He does everything from models, you know.’

‘Mother Gudgeon?’

’A female costermonger that he picked up some where in the slums, the funniest woman in London:  haw! haw!  I promise you she’ll make you laugh when Cyril draws her out.’

He then began to talk upon the subject which interested him above all others, the smartness and swiftness of his yacht.  ’I am trying to persuade your mother and aunt to go for a cruise with me, and I think I shall succeed.’

He directed me to the studio, and we parted.

I found Cyril in a large and lofty studio in Chelsea, filled with the curiously carved black furniture of Bombay, mixed, for contrast, with a few Indian cabinets of carved and fretted ivory exquisitely wrought.  He greeted me cordially.  The walls were covered with Japanese drawings.  I began by asking him about The Caricaturist.

‘Well,’ said he, ’now that the House of Commons has become a bear-garden, and t’other House a waxwork show, and the intellect and culture of the country are leaving politics to dummies and cads, how can the artistic mind condescend to caricature the political world—­a world that has not only ceased to be intelligent, but has even ceased to be funny?  The quarry of The Caricaturist will be literature, science, and art.  Instead of wasting artistic genius upon such small fry as premiers, diplomatists, and cabinet ministers, our cartoons will be caricatures of the pictures of Millais, Leighton, Burne-Jones, Rossetti, Madox Brown, Holman Hunt, Watts, Sandys, Whistler, Wilderspin:  our letterpress will be Aristophanic parodies of Tennyson, Browning, Meredith, Arnold, Morris, Swinburne; game worth flying at, my boy!  The art-world is in a dire funk, I can tell you, for the artistic epidermis has latterly grown genteel and thin.’

Already I was beginning to ask myself whether it was possible to make a confidant of this inscrutable cynic.  ’You are fond of Oriental things?’ I said, wishing to turn the subject.  I looked round at the Chinese, Indian, and Japanese monstrosities scattered about the room.

‘That,’ said he, pointing to a picture of a woman (apparently drunk) who was amusing herself by chasing butterflies, while a number of broad-faced, mischievous-looking children were teasing her—­’that is the masterpiece of Hokusai.  The legend in the corner is “Kiyo-jo cho ni tawamureru,” which, according to the lying Japanese scholars, means nothing more than “A cracked woman chasing butterflies.”  It was left for me to discover that it represents Yoka, the goddess of Fun, sportively chasing the butterfly souls of men, while the urchins, the little Yokas, are crying, “Ma! you’re screwed."’