A Slight Mistake.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume IV, Issue 832, 3 January 1883, Page 2

A Slight Mistake.

There is no one of our contemporaries that we have more respect for than the Timaru Herald, and there is no part of that paper that we enjoy readingmore than the paragraphs that are published under the heading “ Notes,” These deal with subjects that are not of vital importance to the colony, but they are written in an easy, conversational style that makes them very pleasant reading for an idle hour. .But just as Homer was sometimes found taking his forty winks, so is the editor of our contemporary not always so wideawake as he might be, and in one of the “ notes ” we have referred to, published in yesterday’s issue of his paper, he has fallen into a very amusing error. Nor can we hold him entirely responsible for this mistake. He took for his text a telegram recently sent by Reuter, informing us that a sculptor named “John Bell” had obtained from the proprietors of a newspaper called Vanity Fair,, damages to the extent o for a defamatory libel. The editor saw in this an excellent subject for a “ note,” and he seems to have 'forthwith turned up that useful, but not always trustworthy, volume called “ Men of the Time,” and finding the name “ Bell, John ” he has taken for granted that that was the man referred to, and, it must be admitted, drawing on his imagination and his memory to some extent, he proceeds to give an account of Mr Bell’s talents. We have no intention of quarrelling with the estimate formed by the editor of the Timarti Herald as to the place occupied in the English art-world by Mr Bell. If he admires that wonderful Guards’ memorial in Waterloo Place, which, by the way, most competent judges consider fay no means the best monument in a city that is famed for sculpturesque monstrosities, he may comfort himself with the fact that his taste is not singular. But the joke is that the plaintiff in the Vanity Fair case is not the respectable old gentleman who, we may remark en passant, is over seventy years of age, and rarely exhibits now, that the Timatu Herald imagines, but an utterly different person named Belt. The latter has not yet reached such a high position as would entitle him to have a biography inserted in “ Men of the Time,” but he is notwithstanding one of the rising sculptors of the day, and those who feel an interest in such matters will remember that he secured the first prize for the Byron memorial, in which the late Lord Beaconsfield took so great an interest. But knowledge of art is evidently not the strong point of the editor of our contemporary. At the end of the article we have referred to he draws a comparison, or rather points out' a contrast, between the Vanity Fair case and an equally interesting case which was tried in the English courts some time ago—Whistler v. Ruskin. In this latter instance a well known x\merican artist sued Mr Rus v kin, the art critic, for damages, and it will be remembered that an intelligent jury returned a verdict for one farthing. That the language used by Mr Ruskin was unnecessarily coarse and brutal was generally admitted, but that can be excused as one of the many eccentricities of the great writer on art matters, but the fact that persons were willing to give 200 or 300 guineas for Mr Whistler’s pictures is sufficient evidence that those works were of value in some people’s eyes. This is a matter, however, of not much moment to New Zealanders, but we should advise the editor of the Timarti Herald that before he again attempts to enlighten the igporant on such questions he should be quite certain of his facts.