| Description | 17 March 1894
2 Holland Park Road, Kensington
Dear Mr Fuller Maitland
On any Sunday between 3 and 5 I shall always have sincere pleasure in seeing you at my studio. With regard to your wish, a very flattering one, that I should add my name to public protest against the Pall Mall intrusion on the performance of Thursday I feel that much as it honors me, my views on criticism and it's necessary immunities would put it out of my power to do so, apart altogether from the fact that I should feel that I was guilty of some impertinence in venturing publicly to criticise - or criticise a criticism of, a performance in a field which is not my own. I hold on broad grounds that while personal scurrility - of which there is here no question of here [sic] which is unpardonable - the expression of opinion in matters of Art should be wholly untrammelled - unusual views should be publicly opposed by sound views convincingly put forward - bad taste by a dignified true; - if the 'right reason' and good taste do not in the end prevail in that way they will assuredly in no other. I see very little of 'Art criticism' as the phrase is - yet enough to know that in my own field of study criticisms are often put before the public by the side of which the sweeping and ill-natured attack of the Pall Mall in pale and lenient, restrained indeed, perilously bordered on personal scurrility - now, - this is a curious coincidence. I was approached not long ago by a prominent critic asking me to join with certain leading men in my own profession to protest against a certain class of criticism. I unhesitatingly declined on the ground that [-] opinion is free and can only be fittingly combated by opposing to it (what we believe to be) the truth, and that it was, further, not for the dignity of members of a profession to protest publicly against adverse opinion; and the whole thing fell through. I am sure you will feel my dear Mr Maitland that with these views - and I know you wished for a sincere expression - I could not accede to your wish. I think perhaps I ought, in entire candour, to add that I should have felt it out of my power to subscribe to the fullest extent of your view of Herr Kaufmann's performance tho' I would without that have praised the achievement. I fully appreciate the immense difficulty of singing, almost at a moment's notice, music making such extraordinary demands on a tenor organ too - in a pitch nearly half a tone higher than his own. I warmly appreciate his pleasing and the admirable certainty of his dramatic attack - if I may use such an expression, but the method of producing and using his organ (as if it came from an instrument with pedals and not from a human heart) was unsympathetic to me and much marred my
enjoyment.
Will you see at least give you a reason for the faith that is in me!
Sincerely yours
Fred Leighton
|