One hundred years ago
ON Friday, April 25th, a special jury gave Mr Sala, the veteran journalist, a verdict for £5 in his slander action against Mr Furniss, the caricaturist. In an "after-supper speech" at a literary club at Nottingham, Mr Furniss told a somewhat pointless story of how Mr Sala, who it appears began life as an art-student, sent in for the competition at the Academy Schools a drawing of a foot with six toes to it. "The examiner," said Mr Furniss, 'having counted these toes, pointed the matter out to Mr Sala, who did not get into the schools; so now he was the art critic of the Daily Telegraph." Mr Sala swore in the witness-box that he had never attemp- ted to enter the Academy Schools, and that "it was absurdly and wickedly false to say the examiners had ever counted six toes on his drawing of a foot.- Technically, no doubt, Mr Sala was slandered; but would it not have been much more dignified for him to have let the whole thing alone? The defendant's attack may have been in bad taste; but at the same time, no one was the least likely to imagine that Mr Sala did not know the number of toes on the human foot. His action shows once again how sensitive men are in regard to accusa- tions of ignorance on subjects which are not their real vocation, but in which they are proud of exceptional know- ledge. Mr Sala, in spite of his great journalistic reputation, would have been serenely indifferent to the charge of being unable to write.
The Spectator, 3 May 1890
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