[Illustration: CASTING A HAND FROM LIFE.
(_Studio of Mr. Onslow Ford, A.R.A._)]
The sculptor's practice of casting in plaster the hands of his client is
of comparatively recent growth. The artist of the old school--and he is
followed in this by many of the new--disdained so mechanical a means to
fidelity. Very few, indeed, among the British painters and sculptors of
the past will be found who took the pains to see that the hands or even
the figures of their counterfeit presentments on canvas or in marble
tallied with the originals. Sir Joshua Reynolds, as we know, would have
regarded this as the essence of finical vulgarity.
The principal drawback in making casts from life is to be found in the
discomfort, not to speak of the actual torment, it often causes the
sitter by the adhesion of the plaster to the hairy growth of the skin.
Various methods are resorted to with a view to obviate this, and in some
cases successfully.
The hands of Thomas Carlyle--stubborn, combative, mystical--which appear
in the present paper, will amply repay the closest scrutiny. These hands
are unwontedly realistic, and emphasize their distinctiveness in every
vein and wrinkle. They appear to be themselves endowed with each of
those various qualities which caused their possessor to be regarded as
one of the most puissant figures in the century's literature. The hand
is not one, to use Charles Lamb's expressive phrase, to be looked at
_standing on one leg_. It deserves a keener examination.
[Illustration: THOMAS CARLYLE'S HANDS.]
Mention has been made of the hand of a distinguished prelate, Cardinal
Manning. It will not be out of place to compare it with the hands of
the late Archbishop of Canterbury, which were cast posthumously.
Scarcely anything could be more antagonistic. The nervous personality of
Manning is wanting here. The hands of the Archbishop seem more to belong
to the order of the benevolent Bishop Myriel than to that of the
enthusiast and ascetic.
[Illustration: THE LATE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY'S HANDS.]
[Illustration: LORD PALMERSTON'S HAND.]
Plenty of opportunity to study the hands of statesmen is afforded in
those of Lord Palmerston, Count Cavour, Sir Stratford Canning, and Lord
Melbourne. The fallacy of attaching special qualities to any distinctive
trait in the hand of an eminent person is most readily discernible here.
One should avoid _à posteriori_ reasoning. It would be the same for a
physiognomist to argue a man a statesman from a facial resemblance to
Mr. Gladstone, or that he is fit to write tragedies because he owns the
exact facial proportions of Sardou.
[Illustration: COUNT CAVOUR'S HANDS.]
[Illustration: SIR STRATFORD CANNING'S HANDS.]
Among these the hand of Lord Palmerston will stand forth most
prominently to the reader. Its characteristics are, on the whole,
sufficiently obvious, in the appended cast, to be thought accentuated.
It might not unprofitably be noted in connection with those of Stratford
Canning, Viscount de Redcliffe (for fifty years British Ambassador in
India), whose statue by Boehm, with Tennyson's famous epitaph:
Thou third great Canning, stand among our best
And noblest, now thy long day's work hath ceased,
Here, silent in our Minster of the West,
Who wert the voice of England in the East!
is in a nave of the Abbey. With these should be joined the hand of
Viscount Melbourne, the predecessor of Sir Robert Peel in the
Premiership, and the great statesman after whom the city of Melbourne
was named, in order to range this British galaxy against the hands of
the Italian patriots, Count Cavour and Joseph Garibaldi, whose labours
resulted in that master stroke of latter-day politics, the unification
of Italy. Those of the former were cast separately in different
positions, it being the intention of the sculptor for the right hand to
rest lightly upon a column and the left to grasp a roll of parchment.
Garibaldi's hand may be described as both virile and nervous.
[Illustration: LORD MELBOURNE'S HAND.]
[Illustration: HAND OF JOHN BURNS, M.P.]
[Illustration: HAND OF JOSEPH ARCH, M.P.]
[Illustration: GARIBALDI'S HAND.]
[Illustration: SIR E. BOEHM'S HAND.]
[Illustration: HAND OF JOHN JACKSON, R.A.]
Another type of hand is exemplified in the hands of Messrs. Joseph Arch
and John Burns. Both of these belong to self-made men, accustomed to
hard manual labour from childhood. Their powerful ruggedness is
admirably set off by the exquisite symmetry and feminine proportions of
the hand of John Jackson a Royal Academician and great painter of his
time. For symmetry, combined with grace, this hand is not surpassed.
The hand of Sir Edgar Boehm was cast by his assistant, Professor
Lantéri, for the former's statue of Sir Francis Drake. It will be
observed that the fingers grasp a pair of compasses, the original of
those which appear in the bronze at Plymouth.
[Illustration: LADY BLESSINGTON'S HAND.]
[Illustration: MRS. CARLYLE'S HAND.]
[Illustration: MRS. THORNYCROFT'S HAND.]
Reverting to the ladies again, interest will, no doubt, centre upon the
hand of the celebrated Lady Blessington, accounted the wittiest hostess
of her day; and not least attractive will appear Mrs. Carlyle's and
those of Mrs. Thornycroft and the celebrated Madame Tussaud. The wife of
the Chelsea sage was herself, as is known, an authoress of no mean
repute.
A comparison of the hand of Mr. Bancroft with that of Mr. Irving, given
last month, will prove interesting, if not instructive.
[Illustration: MME. TUSSAUD'S HAND.]
It has been said that the hands of Carlyle are characteristic; that they
possess, with those of Wilkie Collins, the merit of being precisely the
sort of hands one would expect to see so labelled. We now present a
third candidate for this merit of candour in casts of the hands of the
notorious Arthur Orton, better known under the sobriquet of the
Claimant. They are pulseless, chubby, oblique: yet they are remarkable.
In scrutinizing them, it is difficult not to feel that one looks upon
hands very remote indeed from the ordinary.
[Illustration: MR. BANCROFT'S HAND.]
[Illustration: HANDS OF THE TICHBORNE CLAIMANT.]
Next we look upon the hand of a giant even superior to Anak, in
Loushkin, the Russian. But physically great as was the Muscovite, it is
to be doubted if he really attained the world-wide celebrity of the
little American, Charles Stratton (otherwise known as "Tom Thumb"),
whose extremity serves as a foil to his rival for exhibition honours.
Another Boehm relic requires some explanation. Every visitor to the
Metropolis has doubtless seen and admired the heroic equestrian statue
of the Duke of Wellington, opposite Apsley House. They may even have
noticed the right hand, which is represented as lightly holding the rein
of the animal. The appended was cast from the original model in clay of
the hand of the Duke, no cast direct from life ever having been
executed.
[Illustration: THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON'S HAND.]
It is sufficient to say that the subjoined hand and arm of Lady
Cardigan, wife of the noted Crimean warrior, was one greatly admired by
Sir Edgar, in whose studio it hung for many years. In like manner will
the hand of Lady Richard Grosvenor be found the possessor of many
beautiful and interesting traits.
[Illustration: THE HANDS OF "TOM THUMB" AND LOUSHKIN, THE RUSSIAN
GIANT.]
[Illustration: LADY CARDIGAN'S HAND.]
A member not altogether dissimilar to that of the musician Liszt is the
hand of Carl von Angeli, Court painter to Her Majesty, and like that
also in setting at naught the conclusions too often arrived at by the
chirognomist. For there is here breadth without symmetry, and an utter
absence of the poise which we look for in the ideal hand of the artist.
It is instructive to compare it to the hand of the painter, John
Jackson.
[Illustration: LADY RICHARD GROSVENOR'S HAND.]
[Illustration: CARL ANGELI'S HAND.]
Observe the massive, masculine fingers and disproportionately small
finger-nails in the hands of Professor Weekes, the sculptor. There is
scarcely any perceptible tapering at the third joint, and the fingers
all exhibit very little prominence of knuckle or contour. It is anything
but an artistic hand, and yet its owner was a man of the keenest
artistic perceptions.
In Frederick Baring's (Lord Ashburton) we find the thick-set fingers,
and what the chirognomist calls the "lack of manual repose," of the
great financier. But as his lordship was statesman with a talent for
debate as well as man of commerce, it will not unlikely be found that
the hand presented combines the both temperaments.
[Illustration: PROFESSOR WEEKES' HANDS.]
[Illustration: LORD ASHBURTON'S HAND.]
I have been enabled, through the kindness of Mr. J. T. Tussaud, to
embellish the present collection by an ancient cast of the hand of the
Comte de Lorge, a famous prisoner in the Bastille. This cast was taken,
together with a death mask, after death, by the great-grandmother of the
sculptor, to whom both relics have descended.
The Queen's hands, which appeared in the last issue of this Magazine,
were cast by John Francis, a famous sculptor of the day. Mr. Hamo
Thorneycroft, R.A., writes me to say that "While the moulds were being
made Her Majesty removed all the rings from her fingers _except_ the
wedding ring. This she was most anxious should not come off, and was in
considerable fear lest the moulding process might remove it."
[Illustration: COMTE DE LORGE'S HAND.]
[_The original drawings of the illustrations in this Magazine are always
on view, and on sale, in the Art Gallery at these offices, which is open
to the public without charge._]
[Illustration: ROSITA]