n speaking of him to a plain person you
would feel compelled to add: 'The painter, you know,' and the plain
person would respond: 'Oh yes,' falsely pretending that he was
perfectly familiar with the name. Simon Fuge had many friends on the
press, and it was solely owing to the loyalty of these friends in the
matter of obituary notices that the great public heard more of Simon
Fuge in the week after his death than it had heard of him during the
thirty-five years of his life. It may be asked: Why, if he had so many
and such loyal friends on the press, these friends did not take
measures to establish his reputation before he died? The answer is that
editors will not allow journalists to praise a living artist much in
excess of the esteem in which the public holds him; they are timid. But
when a misunderstood artist is dead the editors will put no limit on
laudation. I am not on the press, but it happens that I know the world.

Of all the obituary notices of Simon Fuge, the Gazette's was the first.
Somehow the Gazette had obtained exclusive news of the little event,
and some one high up on the Gazette's staff had a very exalted notion
indeed of Fuge, and must have known him personally. Fuge received his
deserts as a painter in that column of print. He was compared to
Sorolla y Bastida for vitality; the morbidezza of his flesh-tints was
stated to be unrivalled even by--I forget the name, painting is not my
speciality. The writer blandly inquired why examples of Fuge's work
were to be seen in the Luxembourg, at Vienna, at Florence, at Dresden;
and not, for instance, at the Tate Gallery, or in the Chantrey
collection. The writer also inquired, with equal blandness, why a
painter who had been on the hanging committee of the Societe Nationale
des Beaux Arts at Paris should not have been found worthy to be even an
A.R.A. in London. In brief, old England 'caught it', as occurred
somewhere or other most nights in the columns of the Gazette. Fuge also
received his deserts as a man. And the Gazette did not conceal that he
had not been a man after the heart of the British public. He had been
too romantically and intensely alive for that. The writer gave a little
penportrait of him. It was very good, recalling his tricks of manner,
his unforgettable eyes, and his amazing skill in talking about himself
and really interesting everybody in himself. There was a special
reference to one of Fuge's most dramatic recitals--a narration of a
nig