An Unsocial Socialist eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 342 pages of information about An Unsocial Socialist.

An Unsocial Socialist eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 342 pages of information about An Unsocial Socialist.

But the design was, to its author’s astonishment, to be paid for separately.  The mason, after hesitating a long time between two-pounds-ten and five pounds, was emboldened by a fellow-workman, who treated him to some hot whiskey and water, to name the larger sum.  Trefusis paid the money at once, and then set himself to find out how much a similar design would have cost from the hands of an eminent Royal Academician.  Happening to know a gentleman in this position, he consulted him, and was informed that the probable cost would be from five hundred to one thousand pounds.  Trefusis expressed his opinion that the mason’s charge was the more reasonable, somewhat to the indignation of his artist friend, who reminded him of the years which a Royal Academician has to spend in acquiring his skill.  Trefusis mentioned that the apprenticeship of a mason was quite as long, twice as laborious, and not half so pleasant.  The artist now began to find Trefusis’s Socialistic views, with which he had previously fancied himself in sympathy, both odious and dangerous.  He demanded whether nothing was to be allowed for genius.  Trefusis warmly replied that genius cost its possessor nothing; that it was the inheritance of the whole race incidentally vested in a single individual, and that if that individual employed his monopoly of it to extort money from others, he deserved nothing better than hanging.  The artist lost his temper, and suggested that if Trefusis could not feel that the prerogative of art was divine, perhaps he could understand that a painter was not such a fool as to design a tomb for five pounds when he might be painting a portrait for a thousand.  Trefusis retorted that the fact of a man paying a thousand pounds for a portrait proved that he had not earned the money, and was therefore either a thief or a beggar.  The common workman who sacrificed sixpence from his week’s wages for a cheap photograph to present to his sweetheart, or a shilling for a pair of chromolithographic pictures or delft figures to place on his mantelboard, suffered greater privation for the sake of possessing a work of art than the great landlord or shareholder who paid a thousand pounds, which he was too rich to miss, for a portrait that, like Hogarth’s Jack Sheppard, was only interesting to students of criminal physiognomy.  A lively quarrel ensued, Trefusis denouncing the folly of artists in fancying themselves a priestly caste when they were obviously only the parasites and favored slaves of the moneyed classes, and his friend (temporarily his enemy) sneering bitterly at levellers who were for levelling down instead of levelling up.  Finally, tired of disputing, and remorseful for their acrimony, they dined amicably together.

The monument was placed in Highgate Cemetery by a small band of workmen whom Trefusis found out of employment.  It bore the following inscription: 

This is the monument of Henrietta Jansenius who was born on the 26th July, 1856, married to Sidney Trefusis on the 23rd August, 1875, and who died on the 21st December in the same year.

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An Unsocial Socialist from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.