HKB
"I am awfully sorry, old chap, but the capital story I told you of Sala and the six toes was about another fellow after all!"
Although a letter from me was published immediately correcting this ridiculous blunder on the part of the reporters, pointing out that what I did say was that Mr. Sala was not the only literary man who began life as an artist; and that I had quoted casually as an instance that Thackeray in early life went to Dickens, my correction--though well known to Sala--was, to my surprise, ignored, and the words I had never used were made the point of the whole action!
Mr. Kemp, counsel for Sala, rolled them out with unctuousness then paused for the Judge to write them down. Mr. Sala, in the witness-box, in melodramatic style denied that he had ever taken sketches to Dickens, and the jury noted that fact. Yet I had never said he did! and furthermore Sala knew I had referred to Thackeray and not to him. Still, for some reason I could never understand, Lockwood allowed this to pass, and cross-examined Sala, admitting that he had heard the story of Thackeray and Dickens--as to my right as a critic--but never denied that these words attributed to me were absolutely a false report! The next point Sala made was that an "offensive caricature" (reproduced by permission on this page) was by me! It was Mr. F. C. Gould's. Sala knew this; so did Lockwood, but he did not deny it: in fact, when the jury considered their verdict, the two points they were clear upon were (1) that I said Sala had offered work to Dickens, and had been refused; (2) that I was the author of the clever (but in Sala's opinion most offensive) caricature of himself and me.
I prompted Lockwood in Court, but he told me that he would not bother about facts, or call me, or deny anything--he took the line that the whole thing was too absurd for serious consideration, and that he would "laugh it out of Court."
One report says that "Mr. Lockwood handled Mr. Sala very gently in cross-examination, and got from him an explosive declaration that Mr. Furniss's statements represented him as an ignorant and impudent pretender. 'Don't be angry with me, Mr. Sala.'"
But the Judge was angry with dear, good, kind Frank Lockwood, and scotched his humour, and refused to allow him to "laugh it out of Court." It annoyed him, and he summed up dead against me. Lockwood could only squeeze one joke out of the whole thing.
Sala in cross-examination said to Lockwood in a bombastic, inflated, Adelphi-drama style:
"That was not my greatest artistic work. Perhaps my greatest was an engraving of the funeral of the Duke of Wellington. It was from my original drawings. I engraved it on a steel plate, and it contained many thousand figures."
Lockwood: "All, I suppose, had the proper number of toes?" (Laughter.)
"They had boots on." (Continued laughter.)
Sala got five pounds for the Judge's want of humour, not for mine.
Having no chance of making my little joke in Court, I took my revenge by accepting a commission to report and illustrate my own trial for the Daily Graphic, and the following--the only authentic account of the Great Six Toes Trial--appeared the following morning:
"It was unfortunate that the Royal Academicians were all busy varnishing their pictures for the forthcoming exhibition at Burlington House when the Great Sala-Furniss Libel Case was heard on Friday last, and that in their absence you have had to apply to me (the defendant) for sketches of the scene in Court. What a chance Mr. Calderon has missed for a companion picture to the one he is painting of another great legal battle--the Parnell Commission! A picture in next year's Royal Academy of the trial between two art critics is surely worthy to be handed down to posterity, say, in the Council Room of the Royal Academy.