ART JOURNALISM
My connection with the Grosvenor Gallery was due, in the first instance,
to a series of articles upon the reform of the Royal Academy published
by me in the columns of the _Pall Mall Gazette_. These papers had
attracted the attention of Sir Charles Dilke, who based upon them a
motion brought forward in the House of Commons, which, however, had no
practical result.
They had also been seen by Sir Coutts Lindsay and Mr. Hallé, and these
gentlemen invited me to associate myself with them in the future conduct
of the Grosvenor. This new vocation, however, in no way interrupted my
career as an Art Critic. Already established on the _Pall Mall Gazette_,
I began at the same time to widen the range of my writings on the
subject of art, and in this way, at the invitation of Mr. Samuel Carter
Hall, became a regular contributor to the _Art Journal_. At the same
time I was offered and accepted the post of Art Critic on the
_Manchester Guardian_, and in the year 1875 I was appointed as the
English editor of _L’Art_, a periodical so luxuriously produced that it
could not be destined ever to win a very large public.
Mr. S. C. Hall was a quaint and curious figure of the time, whose
acquaintance never ceased to afford me a certain humorous enjoyment. He
was supposed to be the model upon which Dickens has based his superb
creation of Mr. Pecksniff, and there were points in his character which
readily lent themselves for exploitation at the hands of such a master
of humour.
For a time our relations on the _Art Journal_ were friendly and
undisturbed, and Mr. Hall was good enough to express in unstinted terms
his appreciation of my work. But it was impossible, even at that time,
in personal converse with the man, not to be haunted by the suspicion
that his constant assertion of the most ideal aims in life were
consistent with an occasional reference to more mundane considerations.
Both he and Mrs. Hall must have sometimes laid themselves open to the
charge of taking themselves too seriously, for I remember Edmund Yates
telling me that he had once asked Charles Dickens whether he thought
they were ever conscious of playing a part, to which Dickens had
replied, “I think once a year they exchange a wink, possibly on Carter’s
birthday.”
Purnell used to relate an anecdote of the gravity of their
entertainments having once been broken up by an unintentional flash of
humour on the part of Mrs. Hall herself. At one end of the dinner-table
Mr. Hall, in his most solemn tones, was announcing to the company his
unswerving faith in a future life, and in conclusion expressed the hope
that in that other and happier world he should rejoin his dear wife;
upon which Mrs. Hall, from her place at the end of the board,
interjected, in strong Irish accents, the somewhat disconcerting answer,
“No, Carter; I shall go to Jesus.”
Mr. Hall’s appearance, with his wealth of white hair and dark eyebrows,
seemed to give a certain stamp of authority to the unctuous platitudes
in which he was wont to indulge. He used constantly to say to me, “My
object, my dear sir, is to do as much good in the world as I can,” and
in such utterances as this there was never, I am sure, even the lurking
suspicion on his part that he was exposing himself to the shafts of
ridicule.
I remember one evening the subject of spiritualism was under discussion,
and Mr. Hall was avowing his confident faith in the reality of messages
from another world to which he confessed that he himself in his writing
was particularly indebted.
“On these occasions,” he said, “when I have written something which I
have deemed to be particularly inspired, I have often turned round to
the spirit whom I knew to be at my side, and have said with fervid
gratitude, ‘Thank you, my dear sir; thank you.’”
It was only upon longer acquaintance I discovered that the air of
venerable piety, which never deserted him in social intercourse, was
consistent with a very shrewd appreciation of commercial success. Little
by little I found the sanctity of his manner sometimes giving way to
very pointed suggestions that the mercantile interest of the Journal
must not be wholly sacrificed to my independent views upon Art.
At first these suggestions were only tentatively put forward, and always
with an elaborate deference to my better judgment as a critic, but day
by day they became more encroaching, until at last the conviction was
forced upon me that the columns under my charge were intended to serve
as a useful support to the advertisement department of the Journal.
After a while these constant interferences became so galling and
exasperating to me that I determined to break our connection, and in a
letter, which I strove to make polite but which I intended to be deeply
sarcastic, I ventured to hint that as the criticism I was called upon to
write was now required to take so entirely the colour of an
advertisement, I thought it would be better that it should pass directly
into the hands of the manager of the advertisement department.
I confess I thought my letter would provoke an explosion of indignant
protest, but in this I was sadly disappointed; for all response I got
only a honeyed little note of acknowledgment, which, as far as I can
remember, ran in these terms:--“I hasten to acknowledge with many thanks
your courteous letter. So much I feel compelled to say, more than this I
will not say.”
The old gentleman’s unflinching urbanity had stood him in good stead,
and even Whistler himself, had he been confronted with such a letter,
could hardly have found the means to continue the controversy.
While I was still associated with the _Art Journal_ I had become also a
contributor to the _Portfolio_, then under the editorship of Mr. Philip
Hamerton, who is best known to the world by his book upon Etching, and
his studies of that part of rural France in which he usually resided.
And a little later I also wrote upon Art matters in the columns of the
_Academy_.
These several engagements, combined with the work that I had to do for
the _Manchester Guardian_, made the annual occasions of the opening of
the Spring Exhibitions a specially busy time for me.
I remember one Sunday morning in May, when I had sat up very far into
the night completing my opening article for the _Guardian_, my servant
awakened me with the intelligence that a young gentleman was in the
drawing-room waiting to see me. He did not give his name, as he told her
that it would be unknown to me; but he had arrived only the previous
evening, as he said, from New York, and was the bearer of several
messages from friends there which he was anxious to deliver before his
departure for the Continent later in the day.
On the night before he had sailed, he said--and this was his excuse for
intruding upon me,--he had supped with some of the artists best known on
the other side, and amongst them he specially introduced the names of
Frank Millet and Edwin Abbey, who, as he said, had drawn from him the
promise that he would on no account quit London without having shaken me
by the hand.
He was so graceful in his apologies for this early intrusion that my
first irritation was quickly allayed, and the warm reference to myself,
of which he assured me he was the bearer, must, I suppose, have touched
my vanity, for I at once invited him to be my guest at dinner that
evening that we might talk more at leisure and at length of the
fortunes of our common friends on the other side.
This, alas, he explained, was impossible.
Was there nothing, then, I could do for him? Nothing! And then with
renewed apologies he rose to go; but at the door he turned as though a
sudden thought had come into his mind. Yes, he had just remembered!
There was a trifling service I could render him, and then, before he
mentioned its nature, he again ran over the names of “the boys,” as he
described them, with whom he had parted on the eve of sailing. Perfect
artist as he had proved himself to be, he blundered at the last; for to
the list, as he now recounted it, he added the name of Alfred Parsons,
who had indeed been in America, but who had long ago returned, and whom
it chanced I had seen at the Arts Club the day before.
All unconscious, however, that this mistake had aroused my suspicions,
he proceeded to describe what he termed the ludicrous position in which
he found himself. He was about to start on a tour round the world, but
by some absurd mistake the remittances from his home in Western America
had gone one way, while he had gone the other. And this petty
contretemps he aptly illustrated in pantomime by indicating the course
of his remittances with his right hand and his own journey with his
left, crossing them on his breast as though to suggest the passing of
ships in the night. And then finally, in the lightest and airiest of
tones, came the announcement of a modest request that I should cash him
a cheque for £50.
Affecting to ignore the financial aspect which our brief acquaintance
had suddenly assumed, I carelessly let fall the remark that I had seen
Mr. Alfred Parsons yesterday at the Arts Club, to which I added the
suggestion that he might deem it convenient under the circumstances to
quit the house.
His bright candid eyes met mine for an instant, and then, as though by a
flash of lightning, he was down the stairs and in the street.
I think it must have been this same young gentleman who only a year or
two later visited Irving at the Lyceum Theatre during the rehearsal of
one of his plays. In that case he represented himself as the nephew of
Mr. Child, a friend of Irving’s who had recently set up a monument at
Stratford-on-Avon; but in substance the story was the same. There also
he sought nothing but the pleasure of shaking Irving by the hand, and it
was only at the moment of parting that he asked for a letter of
introduction to the Mayor of Stratford, that he might not appear quite a
stranger in the town whither he was bound in order to inspect his
uncle’s gift.
But in this case he was more successful, for that coveted £50, which my
niggard spirit had denied him, he managed, upon the strength of Irving’s
letter, to extract from Stratford’s Mayor. From him he received another
letter of introduction to Mr. Chamberlain, but here, as I am glad to
think, with no damaging financial result. It is only fair to add, as a
finish to this brief and interesting episode of an enterprising
adventurer, that Mr. Child, indignant of the use that had been made of
his name, afterwards insisted upon repaying the amount that had been
nefariously borrowed.
My work for the _Manchester Guardian_ sometimes took me far afield, and
in the year 1882, when the city of Manchester was contemplating a
reconstitution of its permanent Art Gallery, I went, at their request,
on a tour of inspection of the museums and schools of France. These
articles were afterwards gathered into a little volume, which was
subsequently translated into French and published in Paris, under the
title of _L’Art en Province_.
I started in the earlier days of July, and the trains between London and
Paris were already thronged with tourists on their way to Switzerland,
and I remember that my journey was brightened at this earlier stage by
an incident, illustrating, in an amusing way, certain characteristics of
the Scottish nature.
Two youthful representatives of the race were seated in a compartment of
a corridor carriage adjoining my own, and in the compartment beyond them
were three or four young ladies travelling alone.
We had not gone very far from Calais, perhaps some twenty miles or more,
when the train was brought to a sudden stop, and looking out of the
window I saw several officials of the railway running up and down the
permanent way in evident surprise and alarm.
Suddenly their attention was concentrated upon the Scotsmen’s
compartment, where the indicator thrust out from the side of the
carriage betokened that the alarm-bell had been sounded by them. A
swift altercation, the purport of which I scarcely gathered, ended in
the peremptory demand on the part of the officials for the surrender of
the travellers’ tickets, combined with a menacing intimation that the
matter would be further investigated on our arrival at Amiens.
At Amiens it seemed as though all the staff of the Nord were gathered
upon the platform, and the force of this official affray was
concentrated upon the compartment occupied by the two sturdy travellers
from the North. With scant ceremony these gentlemen were commanded to
descend from the carriage amid a fierce war of words, in which I fancy
neither party had the smallest understanding of what was uttered by the
other.
Alighting from my own compartment, I caught, rising above the angry
objurgations of the French officials, the repeated assurances of the
Scotsmen that they admitted their fault, and were eager to apologise for
its consequences.
“I admit that I did it,” said the elder of the two, with a broad Scotch
accent, “and I am sorry.”
But this reiterated expression of guilt and regret only seemed to
incense the Frenchmen the more, until, in his despair, the Scotsman
turned to me and in tones of almost pitiful entreaty inquired if I could
speak a little French. On my replying in the affirmative, he supplied me
with an explanation of his conduct, which he begged me to translate for
the benefit of the _chef de gare_.
“Will you tell them,” he replied, “that we admit we did it, and are
sorry, but it occurred in this way? On entering the compartment my
friend and I observed that there were two small windows connected with
the adjoining carriage, where, as we happened to know, a party of ladies
were seated, and more for their sake than ours,” he continued, “and with
a view to securing the privacy which we knew they would desire, my
friend and I thought that we would pull down the blinds over these
windows, and so leave the ladies in the full assurance that they were
unobserved. But when I pulled the ring in the small window nearest to me
the blind did not come down, and then my friend tried, with the same
result, and then I said, ‘Maybe if we both pull together it will be
better.’ And so we both pulled together, and yet the blind did not come
down, but the train stopped, and we are sorry.”
These poor gentlemen had been totally unaware that the rings at which
they had been tugging so vigorously were attached to no blinds, but
directly communicated with the guard of the train. They were, in fact,
the alarm-signals which had brought us to so sudden a halt outside
Calais.
This was the story which he implored me to relate to the _chef de gare_
and his assembled subordinates, and I shall not easily forget the
mingled incredulity and amusement with which my narrative was received.
Thinking to heighten its effect in still further excuse for what had
happened, I explained to the official that in Scotland, especially in
the North, women preserved a seclusion which was almost Oriental, and I
then detailed, word for word, the defence of their conduct as the
Scotsman had confided it to me, and when I came to that part of the
narrative upon which he had particularly insisted, that it was more for
the ladies’ sake than their own that they had endeavoured to secure
complete privacy between the two compartments, the Gallic merriment,
breaking through all official reserve, knew no bounds.
“Mais, monsieur, ce n’est pas possible? Ce n’est pas vrai?”
“Monsieur, parole d’honneur, c’est bien vrai.”
And at last, official indignation appeased by what appeared to them to
be the irresistible humour of the situation, the _chef de gare_ turned
to the unfortunate malefactors and said, “Eh bien, messieurs, montez
donc, montez donc,” and turning to the guard of the train added, “Rendez
les billets a ces messieurs,” and so, amid a ripple of laughter that ran
down the platform, the incident closed, and the train proceeded on its
way. But within little less than an hour afterwards, when I, in my
lonely compartment, had sunk into a comfortable sleep, I felt a touch
upon my shoulder, and opening my eyes saw the Scotsman bending above me.
I feared some new trouble, and inquired if there was anything more I
could do.
“Nothing,” replied he; “but my friend and I feel we are deeply indebted
to you.”
Politely I assured him that the little service I had been able to render
him might count for nothing.
“Ay,” he answered, “but we’re very conscious it counts for a good deal,
for we have been thinking it over, and we very well perceive that it
might have cost us as much as ten pounds,” and so with renewed thanks he
left me.
Reaching Paris, I gave my bag to a porter, and was hurrying along the
platform when I heard the pattering of feet in swift pursuit. I turned,
and there was my Scotsman again.
“See here,” he cried, “I had meant to ask you, but forgot. Will you tell
me, where did you learn your French?”
It had suddenly dawned upon him, after the painful crisis he had gone
through, that there were junctures in life in which the use of a foreign
tongue might be of practical service; and I have no doubt, with the
indomitable persistence which forms part of the national character, he
is even now in some Northern home struggling with the difficulties of
the French language.
Yet, apart from the merest smattering obtained at school, my later
acquaintance with the tongue came about in a curious way. In 1870 I made
the acquaintance of a Monsieur Gauthiot, a dear friend of many years,
who had just then, by reason of the bitter spirit aroused by the
Franco-German War, been driven from Berlin, where he had occupied the
post of Professor of French Literature. For a while he took refuge in
London, whence be contributed occasional articles to the _Débâts_. And
here it was, when we came to know one another, that we agreed to dine
together twice a week, so that on one evening we should talk English,
and on the other that he should instruct me in French.
Our meetings used to take place at the Café Royal in Regent Street, then
a sufficiently humble restaurant chiefly patronised by foreigners. In
cost assuredly, and perhaps in excellence of cuisine, the Café Royal of
that day was far removed from the stately establishment which has since
won so wide a popularity.
But they were pleasant evenings which Gauthiot and I passed there
together, sometimes, when our mutual instruction was over, ending in a
friendly bout of dominoes, and indeed, if his natural preference for
French cooking had not led us there, it is hard to say where else in
London we could have found a congenial place of meeting.
Restaurants in those days were few--Verrey’s, which survives, Simpson’s
in the Strand, and the old Mitre Tavern by Temple Bar, were the only
houses of note that I can recall. A year or two later an attempt was
made to do something on more sumptuous lines by the establishment of the
Pall Mall Restaurant on the island site adjoining Trafalgar Square, but
it failed for lack of patronage, for the days when dining out was to
become fashionable had not arrived.
In 1883, when Messrs. Macmillan contemplated the establishment of the
_English Illustrated Magazine_, they invited me to become its editor,
and the three years during which I conducted this publication
constituted my last important association with Art Journalism.
It was our purpose to compete in quality of illustration with the
established periodicals of the United States, the excellence of whose
woodcuts was attracting deserved attention in England, and I am glad to
think that in these earlier years of the Magazine’s life, enough was
accomplished both in Literature and Art to prove that the project
might, under happier conditions, have been carried to a successful
issue. But, owing to influences which lay beyond our power to control,
it chanced that the experiment was undertaken at an unfortunate hour.
The art of the wood-engraver was already suffering through competition
with those mechanical processes of reproduction by which it is now
almost entirely destroyed. And it soon became evident that the more
careful work we were trying to present could not compete in popular
acceptance with those rougher and readier methods which, by reason of
their greater economy, were already widely employed. And yet it must
always be, I think, a matter for regret that this beautiful art of the
wood-engraver should be doomed to annihilation. I have tried to show in
a separate chapter how great a part it played in that renaissance of Art
in England which is associated with the pre-Raphaelite movement, and I
am proud to think that some of the best of its later examples found
their way into the _English Illustrated Magazine_ during the period of
my editorship.
On the literary side the Magazine could boast, during those earlier
years, of contributions from men already famous, or who have since won
their way to fame. Among the poets, Meredith and Swinburne were repeated
contributors to its pages; and from a throng of distinguished writers in
various fields I may cite the names of Professor Huxley, Henry James,
Marion Crawford, Bret Harte, Lawrence Oliphant, Stanley Weyman, Theodore
Watts-Dunton, and Richard Jefferies.
It was during the progress, through the pages of the Magazine, of his
captivating story, _The House of the Wolf_, that Weyman asked my
judgment on a little play he had written, and I wrote him in response a
long letter pointing out what I thought to be its defects, and setting
forth the reasons why, as I believed, it could scarcely, as it stood, be
expected to achieve a success on the stage.
Mr. Weyman was at that time only on the threshold of his reputation as a
novelist, and I remember that my sister--who was reading for me some of
the many proffered contributions to the Magazine--most strongly urged me
very carefully to consider the claims of _The House of the Wolf_.
A swift perusal of the story left me in no doubt as to its merits, and
its warm acceptance at the hands of the readers of the Magazine amply
confirmed my judgment; and yet it is strange, as illustrating how widely
divergent opinions may be on matters of taste, that the story, on
nearing its conclusion, was submitted to the publishers’ reader, with
the idea of its being issued by them in book form, and that his
unfavourable judgment left Messrs. Macmillan with no alternative but to
decline the volume.
Needless to say, it was quickly accepted on my recommendation in another
quarter, but by the break in our association which this incident
occasioned, it chanced that I saw little of Mr. Weyman for some years to
come. It was only when I had terminated my connection with the Magazine,
and when I was occupied in the management of the Comedy Theatre, that a
play was submitted to me by the foremost literary agent of the time, who
said that he would not disclose the author’s name until its claims had
been considered, but that he might mention that he was one of the most
popular novelists of the day.
I was quite unconscious that I had seen the play before, and with this
strong recommendation I gave it the most careful attention, and wrote to
the agent a long letter setting forth what I considered to be its
defects from the point of view of the stage. As I felt bound to decline
the play, I did not feel justified in making further inquiry as to its
authorship, and it was not until long afterwards that I had a visit from
Mr. Weyman, who produced from his pocket two letters which, he said, he
thought I should be interested to see. They were my own two letters,
written at widely different dates, upon this very play, and it was
certainly, as he pointed out, a curious testimony to the constancy of my
judgment that they absolutely agreed in opinion, and were in some
instances almost identical in phrase.
Strange and amusing experiences sometimes come to editors, especially to
an editor of an illustrated magazine. I remember that Mr. Walter Crane
had designed some very beautiful decorative work enshrining some poems
of his own, and in several of the pages nude figures had been
introduced, but treated in so ideal and imaginative a spirit that it
seemed impossible they could provoke a protest even from an early
Puritan; and yet immediately after their publication I received a letter
of passionate rebuke from a reader of the Magazine dwelling in the
suburbs, who with scathing criticism, obviously inspired by the loftiest
moral indignation, recommended me, if I wished to study my own vile
form, to look in the glass, and not, by giving such indecent pictures
to the world, to pollute the purity of the reader’s home.
The letter, I think, was dated from the Old Kent Road, and the only
pleasure I could draw from it rested on the fact that my Magazine was
entertained in so unsuspected a quarter.
But it was not only from the humble homes of virtue that such criticism
proceeded. While Hugh Conway’s story, _The Family Affair_, was running
through the pages of the _English Illustrated_, I one day received a
letter from the wife of an eminent judge, who told me that she could no
longer permit the Magazine to lie upon her table, where it might at any
time be read by her unmarried daughters.
It had been part of the author’s scheme that, during the initial stages
of the story, some doubt should remain in the reader’s mind as to the
legitimacy of a foundling child whom the heroine had taken under her
care, and it was this suspended uncertainty which had so sorely troubled
the soul of the judge’s wife.
She felt confident, as she was good enough to assure me, that the doubt
would be cleared up in the end, and that the cause of morality and
decorum would be ultimately vindicated, but she found it nevertheless
intolerable that the innocent minds of her daughters should be haunted,
even for a season, by so questionable a problem.
I never realised till I occupied the editorial chair how many people
there are whose insanity takes a Shakespearian form. There was, I think,
never a week passed without the reception of one or more articles
intended to elucidate the authorship of the plays; and although the
readers were by no means in entire agreement in ascribing them to Bacon,
they were absolutely unanimous in the belief that the claims of
Shakespeare were wholly and ludicrously inadmissible.
It is pleasant, however, to reflect that an editor’s duties yield many
happier experiences, and bring him into contact with men and women whom
otherwise it might not be his good fortune to know. It was in this way
that I made the acquaintance of poor Richard Jefferies, whose delightful
articles, under the heading of “The Game-keeper at Home,” had been
already published in the _Pall Mall Gazette_. Jefferies’s appearance,
even at our first meeting, gave me the unhappy impression that he was
not destined for a long life. But despite his nervous temperament that
was evidently in a large measure dependent upon the frailty of his
physical constitution, he was a man of great simplicity and charm of
manner.
The love that he had for the things of outward nature was clearly a
passionate possession that absorbed his life. Of the teeming life of the
country, from the waving ears of corn down to the minutest flower or the
smallest insect that inhabited the shadowed world at their feet, he was
a loving and constant observer whose eyes never wearied in their task.
With Jefferies the enjoyment begotten of this watchful brooding over the
things of the country was, I think, all-sufficing. He seemed never
desirous to link it in association with any more directly human impulse
or emotion, and in this way his writings, as it seems to me, make a
separate claim, distinct from that of any other author, whether in
poetry or in prose, who have confessed a like passion for the beauty of
the outward world.
I was fortunate in securing several very beautiful contributions from
his pen, some of which gained an added interest from the delightful
illustrations of Mr. Alfred Parsons, who found himself in full sympathy
with Jefferies’s purposes and design. At a later date Jefferies was
associated in the same way with my friend Mr. North, whose delicate
drawings showed a quick sympathy with the mood of the writer; and I know
that Jefferies highly appreciated the gentle hospitality which Mr. North
afforded him in the later days of his declining health.
Another figure which comes back to me among the vivid memories of those
editorial days is that of Mr. Lawrence Oliphant--surely one of the
strangest, most gifted, and fascinating characters of the time in which
his chequered career was passed. No one who met Oliphant could be
insensible to his charms, and yet, as one sat in the man’s presence, it
was always with a feeling of wonder and amazement at the many
vicissitudes of his life.
I knew him personally only towards the close of his career, when he
offered to me for publication a series of articles on “The Lake of
Tiberias,” which were to be illustrated by his wife. This was during one
of his brief visits to England from the Holy Land, where he had made his
home, and he would sometimes lunch with me at the Garrick Club, holding
me enthralled, while the passing hours sped by unnoticed, as he unfolded
his views of life, drawn from the deep fund of a rich experience won in
many changing occupations.
Brilliant and witty, earnest and often eloquent in his most serious
moods, there was scarcely more than a hint in his conversation of those
shifting impulses, now so passionately held and again so swiftly
abandoned, that had made of his career something of a wonder to the
world. Unhappily the task which he and his wife had jointly undertaken
for the Magazine, led to her untimely death, from sudden fever, upon the
very shores of the lake where she was engaged upon the illustrations for
his article.
One of the things which gave me most pleasure in my record as an editor
was the encouragement that I was enabled to afford to that gifted young
draughtsman Hugh Thomson, on the threshold of his career.
I remember very well the day he first entered my office. He was wholly
unknown to me, and without any introduction save that which he presented
himself in the form of a number of drawings enclosed in a portfolio that
he bore in his hand. With the face of a mere boy, and most emphatically
an Irish boy, it seemed to me, as I looked at him, scarcely possible
that the drawings that he showed me were from his own hand.
They comprised, I remember, a series of illustrations to _Vanity Fair_,
and despite the confessed immaturity of their execution, they exhibited,
as I thought, such fineness of perception, and such an intuitive sense
of humour, that I was at once anxious to learn from him what he had
already published.
His reply, perhaps made with a little reluctance, was that he had
published nothing, and again the suspicion recurred to me that this
nervous youth, who stood in such evident anxiety before me, must somehow
have become possessed of these drawings which he was trying to palm off
as his own. He was, as I found on questioning him, engaged in making
drawings for trade advertisements in the firm of Maclure, Macdonald and
Macgregor, confessedly not a very promising experience upon which to
base his claim to be engaged on the staff of an established magazine.
And yet, as I looked first at him and then at the drawings he had
submitted to me, I felt I could not let him go without a trial, and,
still in my doubtful mood, I suggested to him that he should execute a
drawing, the subject of which was to be chosen by me, and that I would
give him a fortnight to see what he could make of it.
Almost at hazard I asked him to make a drawing illustrating the social
life of Pall Mall during the later days of the eighteenth century, and
the quick look of pleasure with which he accepted the task at once drove
from my mind any remnant of suspicion with which I had at first received
him. Within a fortnight he returned with a very remarkable essay for a
youth, and I afterwards published it in the pages of the Magazine.
From that day he became a constant contributor to its pages, and when
the series of drawings illustrating Sir Roger de Coverley were
ultimately gathered into book form, he at once made his mark with all
who were competent to judge.
[Illustration:
_Hollyer_
JAMES MARTINEAU
From the painting by G. F. WATTS, R.A., in the National Portrait
Gallery.
_To face page 167._
]