MUCH ADO

Evening Star, Issue 18332, 20 July 1923, Page 3

MUCH ADO

BEERBOHM’S OFFENDING CARTOONS. [From Our London Correspondent.] June 7. Max' Beerbohm’s offending cartoons, depicting King Edward with a harp, a halo, and a corporation, and tho Prince of Wales marrying “Flossie” in his dotage, have been withdrawn from tho Leicester Galleries at tho artist’s request. Perhaps neither of these wittily daring drawings was yt the best Maxian. vein, but educated people found no real offence in them. To object to them is to establish quite a novel standard of artistic lese majesty in England, as anybody recognises who has the least acquaintance with old Georgian days. More than one distinguished friend of tho Prince laughed heartily over both cartoons without looking round to see who might bo watching him, and, if'they had applied to any other personages in the world, never a word would have been said against them. The upshot is that Sir Gerald du Manrier secures a great bargain in the cartoon of the Prince, which would sell at four times its original price now. And eocisty’s quiot chuckles over Max’s sprightly humor arc transferred to the comic spectacle of my Lord Boaverbrook as the palladium of aristocratic loyalty and his “stunt” journal aa the arbiter of perfect taste.