The Second Mask

The death of Sir Archibald Hacker in 1901 was attended with every circumstance of honour and lavishing of encomium which the exercise of his prodigious talent over a period of forty years deserved. The loss to the nation was marked by a wash of black ink in the newspapers, speeches in Parliament, and an expensive monograph got up for the occasion by the great man’s associates. The Queen herself, tottering on the brink of the grave, added a black ribbon to the weeds she had worn since the death of her husband; while from across the Channel, the French watched with a mixture of pique and respect, insinuating, as they bowed their heads, that these observances were really inspired by a wish to outdo the sumptuous obsequies of Victor Hugo and Voltaire. Yet even the French could not sneer as cuttingly as was their wont, for they had long recognised a strain of cruel wit in Hacker’s art, which, coupled with the fact that he had studied in Paris in his youth, inclined them to regard him as one of their own.” (The Second Mask).