Papa was too
self-centred for this; a large side of art was hidden from him;
anything mysterious, suggestive, archaic, whether Italian, Spanish
or Dutch, frankly bored him. His feet were planted firmly on a
very healthy earth; he liked art to be a copy of nature, not of
art. The modern Burne-Jones and Morris school, with what he
considered its artificiality and affectations, he could not
endure. He did not realise that it originated in a reaction from
early-Victorianism and mid-Victorianism. He lost sight of much
that is beautiful in colour and fancy and all the drawing and
refinement of this school, by his violent prejudices. His opinions
were obsessions. Where he was original was not so much in his
pictures but in the mezzotints, silver, china and objets d'art
which he had collected for many years.
"Whatever he chose, whether it was a little owl, a dog, a nigger,
a bust, a Cupid in gold, bronze, china or enamel, it had to have
some human meaning, some recognisable expression which made it
lovable and familiar to him. He did not care for the fantastic,
the tortured or the ecclesiastical; saints, virgins, draperies and
crucifixes left him cold; but an old English chest, a stout little
chair or a healthy oriental bottle would appeal to him at once.
"No one enjoyed his own possessions more naively and
enthusiastically than my father; he would often take a candle and
walk round the pictures in his dressing-gown on his way to bed,
loitering over them with tenderness--I might almost say emotion.
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