HKB
their leader in last Friday's issue, as the insignificant paragraph, 'Greek Portraits,' which alone the Daily Telegraph inserted, in no way states the facts of the case?"
"SIR,--The writer of the leader in your issue of last Friday is guilty of the very fault of which he accuses me. He charges me with not acquainting myself with the subject I treated of in my lecture; he has manifestly not troubled to acquaint himself with that lecture. The ignorance--at any rate, the omissions--that he lays to my door do not exist. Did he expect me in the course of a short hour's lecture to a general audience--which was certainly not prepared for any history or technicalities--to bring forward in my opening sentences the whole story of the rise and development of Greek portraiture? The principal omission of which he complains is the legend of the daughter of Dibutades--calling it an omission because, forsooth, he did not read it in the Times report! But, in point of fact, not only did I give the story at length, but I reproduced on the screen Mortimer's well-known picture of the incident. Surely it is not too much to ask, even for a caricaturist to ask--for such he somewhat scornfully terms me--that when so powerful a personality as a leader writer levels his pen against an individual, however humble, he should not depend upon the report of another newspaper, the exigencies of whose space naturally prevent, it may be assumed, the devotion of more than a column verbatim report to any utterances of a 'mere caricaturist.' But, frankly, does the nature of my own occupation in the arts preclude me from pronouncing a correct judgment on portraits and portraiture? For that, after all, is the burden of your article. Is not an opinion, if correct, as good coming from a bootblack as from a Royal Academician? If so, I submit that mine, if worthy of discussion at all, might at least be ascertained and be considered with respect. If not, then I bring the lecture of Professor Herkomer, A.R.A., published on the very same day as your article, to witness that my judgment was a fair one. By a curious coincidence, he lectured at Leeds on the self-same subject within twenty-four hours of the delivery of my own little lecture; he travelled over much the same ground; brought forward in some instances the very same examples as I, and deduced very much the same conclusions."