Silas Dene

Editor of the Lantern Review, who has made criticism itself a form of celebrity: a favourable notice from him can fill a room, and a cruel paragraph can follow a provincial artist for years.

Silas Dene edits the Lantern Review and has made criticism a kind of fame in its own right. In a London where critics hold no formal authority, and are powerful precisely because of it, his notices can raise a provincial singer into the season, make a new painter expensive, or turn a pompous public monument into a joke repeated by cabmen.

Rival papers accuse him of manufacturing taste. He replies that taste was always manufactured and that he merely prints the invoice. Theatre managers, publishers and dealers court him openly while pretending not to read him, and the trade knows that a scandal in criticism may concern bribery, friendship, hidden patronage or the deliberate ruin of someone who refused a private request. A favourable Dene notice is therefore read twice: once for its praise, and once for its motive.

He dresses conspicuously in white and appears to enjoy the fact that nothing about him is accidental. His presence at a first night is itself treated as news.

Companies meet him when an artist, performer or patron needs something found, proven or quietly prevented, or when a paragraph in the Lantern Review has made someone angry enough to hire help. He is excellent company and a poor person to be written about.

In person

Dene is a slim, self-possessed man of thirty-eight with short red hair, an angular, clever face, pale grey eyes and a controlled expression that seldom shows what he thinks until he has written it. He dresses in white or cream — editorial coat, waistcoat and a well-judged cravat — stylish without being impractical. Marked proofs, a notebook and theatre notes are generally within reach.