Music: Vexed

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Members of the British Royal Academy were vexed last week with a painful problem. One of their most distinguished members, Charles Sims, had sent six pictures for hanging. His eagerness to have the pictures shown was well known, but the members of the Academy were less willing to put them on display. Charles Sims had committed suicide the previous week by jumping in a river with stones in his pockets; his six paintings were obviously the work of a madman.

One of the paintings was called Here Am I. Another was Man's Last Pretense of Consummation to Indifference. A third was titled Behold, I Have Graven Thee on the Palm of My Hand. Remembering much solid and conservative work which had previously been signed by Charles Sims, remembering, too, the portrait of George V which Painter Sims had executed at their request and which they had been forced to decline because it gave the monarch spindle legs, several of the Hanging Committee thought it would be kinder not to show these last ridiculous and dreadful pictures. Charles Sims had written twice to his agent, before killing himself, to ask that his paintings be sent to the Academy on the right day, accompanied by the titles he had given them.