The electric light is another disappointing "improvement." It has gone out four times in one week, and we had to use candles and lamps.
Then the District Messengers' wire, which I had in communication with my house, would not act. I rang up for a cab; no response. I rang up again; nothing came. I sent out for a cab, and was late for dinner. The next day a representative called casually to inform me that we could not use the wire for two or three days, as something had gone wrong.
I then tried the phonograph; but I had more correspondence about it than I had through it.
[Illustration: DO WOMEN FAIL IN ART? THE CHRYSALIS.]
A plague on these experiments in the advancement of science intended to facilitate our work and add to our comfort! The electric light kills our sight; the telephone destroys our temper; the District Messenger call ruins our dinner; and, conjointly, they waste our time and deplete our purses.
When there was a controversy in the _Daily Graphic_ I wrote in the interests of women to make one confession:
In the opinion of many, women fail in nothing, but base man fails in appreciating women in art as in everything else where appreciation of talent is due. The fashion-plate young lady, with her doll's face, her empty head, and her sawdust constitution, monopolises all the attention that selfish man can afford to give outside thoughts about his own sweet self.
Every year we see some work in the Academy from the easel of a woman which is far better than many of the works exhibited by Academicians, and although when that selfish body was being formed there were not enough men to supply the number of figure-heads required, and two women were requisitioned to launch the ship, all the gratitude shown to the sex has been years of continued insult. Yet there are certain Academicians who paint like women for women, and instead of leaving it to women receive all the honour and remuneration; and those having this feminine art and spirit behave the worst to those whom they copy. The pretty-pretty pictures of conventional coquetries which we have served up year after year by the chefs of this pastry of art might be concocted by the dainty fingers of the lady artist just as well as, or even better than, by the effeminate man who takes her place and robs her of her honours. But after all, are not the women themselves to blame? Art, I hold, is nowadays purely a commercial affair. Burlington House is simply a huge shop, and it is all nonsense to talk for one instant about the encouragement it gives to art, or to take seriously the prosy platitudes which are poured forth year by year at that picture tradesmen's dinner--the Royal Academy Banquet. Women are not invited--women, forsooth, whose works on the walls have done their share towards bringing the shillings to the turnstiles of the Academy. But more ridiculous still is the omission of lady patrons of art, for it is well known that this feast is given with two objects--to advertise the coming show, merely "chicken and champagne" in theatrical phraseology, and to feast Mr. Cr[oe]sus, who buys the pictures of his host.