Woolfian Boundaries - Clemson University

128 WOOLFIAN BOUNDARIES
black bars of the Oak Eggar caterpillar.… Th ere is something sinister about him;
he swarms rapidly across roads; he smudges when crushed; he devours leaf after
leaf. (165; see Figure 2)
We are left convinced that Woolf might
easily claim to be, if not Kapp himself,
then certainly a Kapp-of-prose.
Woolf’s interest in the brutishness
lurking within Kapp’s caricatures (and perhaps,
by implication, within civilization itself)
might be read as a subtle corrective to
another reviewer. As a “publisher’s note” in
Kapp’s book makes clear, the twenty-four
caricatures were culled from an earlier exhibition
of his art, which had taken place
in May and June, 1919, at the Little Art
Rooms, London. Th e exhibition was well
received and many excerpts from the more
positive reviews were reprinted at the back
of the subsequent book. “His critics are
all agreed,” writes Woolf, alluding to this
part of the book, “that he combines the
gifts of the artist with those of the caricaturist”
(164). Among these excerpts was a
short review or notice by Jan Gordon, the
Athenaeum’s regular art critic, which had appeared in that publication on 23 May 1919. “Mr.
Kapp’s caricatures,” wrote Gordon, “are unlike most, without that music-hall bestiality which
seems to be the mainspring of so much of our satiric art” (163). Th e very next section of Gordon’s
short review was the only part of it not reprinted in Kapp’s book: “for,” he continues, “it is
so easy to remember that man is at root an animal.” As we have seen, Woolf will not hesitate to
make this “easy” point, nor hesitate to imply that Kapp is encouraging her to make it. Knowing
that the Athenaeum had recently published a piece on Kapp’s art and that her readers might
recall this, Woolf would have probably made the eff ort to track down Gordon’s earlier piece.
If this encouraged Woolf to think about the potential bestiality of Kapp’s caricatures—and
to fi nd in them hooves, seals, and Oak Eggar caterpillars—then another, more
prominent, article might also have had a bearing on her review. Appearing in the Contents
page of the journal, a space reserved for editorials, and in the very same edition as
Gordon’s notice, “Th e Usurpation of the Museums” weighs in on a matter that had been
increasingly preoccupying cultural commentators in the months following the armistice
of November 1918. Th e piece is attributed to “C. B.,” who, one assumes, must be none
other than Clive Bell. 1 Figure 2
“Th e facts are simple,” laments Woolf’s brother-in-law:
Half the National Gallery, the whole of the National Portrait Gallery, the whole
of the Tate, a good part of the British Museum and of the Imperial Institute, the
whole of Hertford House, and half the Victoria and Albert Museum have been taken