action. You know that Whistler ought to have won. You know that Ruskin was
shamelessly in fault; but the British jury and the so-called British artists
treated Whistler and his superb work with contempt. Take a different case
altogether, the Belt case, where all the Academicians went into the witness box,
and asserted honestly enough that Belt was an impostor, yet the jury gave him a
verdict of L5,000, though a year later he was sent to penal servitude for the
very frauds which the jury in the first trial had declared by their verdict he
had not committed. An English law court is all very well for two average men,
who are fighting an ordinary business dispute. That's what it's made for, but
to judge a Whistler or the ability or the immorality of an artist is to ask the
court to do what it is wholly unfit to do. There is not a judge on the bench
whose opinion on such a matter is worth a moment's consideration, and the jury
are a thousand years behind the judge."

"That may be true, Frank; but I cannot help it."

"Don't forget," I persisted, "all British prejudices will be against you.
Here is a father, the fools will say, trying to protect his young son. If
he has made a mistake, it is only through excess of laudable zeal; you would
have to prove yourself a religious maniac in order to have any chance against
him in England."

"How terrible you are, Frank. You know it is Bosie Douglas who wants me to
fight, and my solicitors tell me I shall win."

"Solicitors live on quarrels. Of course they want a case that will bring
hundreds if not thousands of pounds into their pockets. Besides they like
the fight. They will have all the kudos of it and the fun, and you will pay
the piper. For God's sake don't be led into it: that way madness lies."