File:Benjamin Robert Haydon - correspondence and table-talk; with a memoir by his son Frederic Wordsworth Haydon (1876) (14576638790).jpg

Identifier: benjaminroberth01hayd (find matches)
Title: Benjamin Robert Haydon : correspondence and table-talk ; with a memoir by his son Frederic Wordsworth Haydon
Year: 1876 (1870s)
Authors: Haydon, Benjamin Robert, 1786-1846 Haydon, Frederic Wordsworth, 1827-1886
Subjects: Haydon, Benjamin Robert, 1786-1846
Publisher: London : Chatto and Windus
Contributing Library: Robarts - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: University of Toronto

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was far ahead of anything else in the room. But how couldthe directors now award the prize to a young man who had theaudacity to ridicule the judgment of connoisseurs, and con-demn the conduct of the Kings Academy ? Here was theirdilemma. If they awarded the prize to Haydon it would giveoffence to society, to the connoisseurs, by the breath of whosenostrils they lived, and to the Eoyal Academy, which theywere bound to support. And yet they could not conscien-tiously give the prize to any other of the competitors, theworks of these being so inferior to * Macbeth. W^hat was tobe done ? Like all men who have not the courage of theiropinions, the directors devised an expedient —that hatefulshelter for a lie—the refuge of every form of weak or dis-honest administration. They would give prizes to nobody, butthey would take the prize moneys, five hundred guineas inall, which they had pledged their honour to give in differentprizes to different classes of competitors, and go into the town
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The EjrecfiiionarAi-Mcaels iii ^^vlomniFirst pen sketch Ccl^fHT S^ JSJ3. B. R, HAYDON. 79 and buy for their own gallery a picture which had never com-peted at all.* Thus they said to themselves, We shall get well out of ourdifficulty. We shall not reward Haydon, but we shall not dohim the injustice of rewarding anybody else, and we shallencourage art. Moreover, we shall add a picture to ourgallery. It is satisfactory to think that their calculations turned outmistaken. They got heartily abused by all parties for theirunpardonable breach of faith, and laughed at into the bargainfor buying a bad picture! Such is the fate of men when theyabandon a principle for what they deem expedient. This abstraction from Haydon of the three himdred guineasprize upon which he had counted, and which he had fairlywon, was the first serious return blow he received for his Three Letters. Coming upon the top of Sir George Beau-monts curiously unkind withdrawal, it hit Haydon as hard ashis best enemies coul

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