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The Hanging Committee thrust me into the darkest corner of the octagon-room, and the press ignored my existence excepting in one instance, when my critic dismissed me in a quarter of a line as a 'presumptuous dauber. I was stunned with the blow, for I had counted so securely on the L.200 at which my grand historical painting was dog-cheap not to speak of the deathless fame which it was to create for me that I felt like a mere wreck when my hopes were flung to the ground, and the untasted cup dashed from my lips.
Besides the suite of drawing-rooms, with their costly furniture, the plate-rooms were beneath the Gothic dining-room; and on the other side beyond a room known as the Octagon-room was the Jewelled Armoury.
The Crimson drawing-room and the Octagon-room were dismantled. The plate-rooms were considered fireproof, but the Jewelled Armoury was emptied of its treasures, among them the famous peacock of Tippoo Sahib. More than five hours passed before the danger was over.
The picture a work of great fancy and high feeling, but deficient in manipulative skill the artist, a poet in the true sense of the word, had spent months in dreaming and in joying over. He found it in the dingiest corner of the octagon-room. His lip quivered and his chest heaved. He pulled his hat further down on his face, and walked quickly and quietly out.
We would gladly, indeed, see the octagon-room abolished. A picture is degraded, and an artist is insulted, by a painting being hung in this darksome and 'condemned cell. The canvas gets a 'jail-bird' stamp, and its character is gone. In France, at the Palais-Royal, the young artists have a far better chance.
Not so the nameless artist, whose work of many toiling days, and many sleepless nights, has been sent in unprotected to take its chance. He knows nothing of its fate until he can get a catalogue. It may be on the line in the east room; it may be above the octagon-room door; it may not be hung at all. Only the great artistic guns are invited to the private view, the rest must wait till Monday.
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