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The Personal Property of the late The Rt. Rev. John Taylor Smith C.V.O., K.C.B, D.D.

Chaplain General of the British Army

Presented to St. John's College Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada

PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST, 1890
By kind permission of the Uffizi Gallery, Florence.

Note.—I have been unable to find out all W. Q. O.’s early pictures, but the most important are in this list and from 1862 the list, I believe, is complete.

This book is not a treatise on art but a record of an artist’s life. If I have succeeded in showing how beautiful that life was, how loving and sincere, I shall have attained my object. And if I mention myself too often I can only apologize by saying that it is almost impossible to write of the hero without something of the hero-worshipper appearing.

I would not have dared to attempt it had it not been for my Mother’s wish expressed in her will, as well as many times in her lifetime, and for her bequest of all her letters and diaries. Her sincere belief that I could do it satisfactorily has given me courage, and her diaries, etc., have given me much information, much, that is, compared with my own, but meagre compared with what one could wish. It has taken me years to write this “Life”—on a backveld farm where one is housemaid, nursemaid, cook, dressmaker and governess besides mother and wife. One is often too tired to think clearly, and quite too tired to hold a pen; half an hour a day uninterrupted is a luxury. So if this book is disconnected and incoherent I shall not be surprised, though very sorry and humble and apologetic. Indeed I feel that I should not have attempted it under such circumstances and with not a breath of art or beauty near—but needs must when a great love drives.

The last photograph of my father, in the studio, shows the worn-out body with the beautiful indomitable soul still there and energetically directing the frail hand in its last work—he had promised the portrait for the R.A. that year and he kept his promise—as always. The last signature was on the “Abbey” and, with the missing “r” in the middle, testifies to the feeble hand that could no longer write though it could still paint. How impossible to believe that a soul, a spirit so great, could ever die, though it must change its habitat.

After his death my Mother received many “beautiful” letters, as she called them, praising the beauty of his life. Dr Rainsford Gill who attended him for many years wrote: “His was one of the most beautiful lives I have ever known.” Miss Henriette Corkran wrote: “A sweet spirit, a beautiful spirit”; her sister: “Great artist, great soul and most lovely spirit.”

Others wrote: “Not only genius but loftiness of character and nobility of life.” “Great Artist and sincerest friend.” “A persuasive individuality.” “All who knew him loved him.” “He not only painted beautiful pictures but he possessed an even more beautiful soul.”

“He never could grow old”—all those who saw him even just before he died found him as lively and witty as ever. He even gave an interview (an occupation he did not like) shortly before his death, and the interviewer wrote of his liveliness and of “the voice that had a blessing in it.”

Arthur Gilbey, who sat for “The Young Duke” and “Her Mother’s Voice,” wrote: “I always came away from the sittings having learnt something from Sir William’s delightful conversation.” Many of his friendships began with portrait sittings.

The Prince of Wales (King George V) said in his speech at the R.A. Banquet: “Sir William Quiller Orchardson had been a member of the R.A. for thirty-three years. . . . I look back with pleasure to the sittings I gave him twelve years ago for the picture of the ‘Four Generations.’ ”

These words of praise and many more helped my Mother to bear her loss, an immense one, for they were lovers still. If he was great in mind, she was his equal in greatness of soul—a sympathetic greatness perhaps—and her gentle influence over him is difficult to estimate. Years ago, in ’91, Mr Orchar had written to her: “Mind, you have the charge of a great artist, but I am sure you can be trusted to take great care of him.”

Towards the end he lived a very retired life, loving privacy and friends, and I think the Great General Public began to forget him a little. Not so artists and real art-lovers, both at home and abroad—to them he was the outstanding genius of his time, the Old Master, and they raised a monument to him in St. Paul’s Cathedral.

“The artist is the man’s double; the style is a perfectly natural evolution from a chastening self-discipline and an exquisite sense of refinement.”^[1] That is just the man, stern self-discipline and an exquisite sense of right and beauty.

I give grateful thanks to my sisters-in-law, Mrs M. P. Andrews (née Shah Gray) and Miss Leila Gray for their first sorting of my Mother’s papers, and particularly to Mrs Andrews, and Mrs. Baird for copyright collecting; to W. D. McKay, R.S.A. (now dead), and Mrs Ford (“Chattie”), for their help about my Father’s early life; and to my uncle C. F. Moxon and many old friends and acquaintances for so kindly answering my letters of enquiry, even when they were unable to answer my questions.

Mrs Andrews has kindly made most careful enquiries for me about Monsieur Gauchez’s heirs but can find none. As he himself mentions in one of his letters that he is the “last of his race,” I have ventured to include some of his many letters to my Father; they not merely give Monsieur Gauchez’s views but reflect my Father’s, and are in fact my only means of knowing and recording their long conversations. I am absolutely certain that Monsieur Gauchez, were he alive, would give me every help in his power to honour his “so great friend ‘le maître’ Orchardson.”

If I have quoted anything “out of order” and without permission I crave forgiveness; distance lends enchantment but also adds difficulties.

H. Orchardson Gray.

Wolvehoek, O.F.S.P.,

S. Africa.

Looking back on my long visits as a girl to 13 Portland Place I can still feel most vividly the vitality of “Orchardson’s” personality.

Sitting in the atmosphere of an ordinary breakfast table, his entrance made one’s faculties all alert. At once commonplace remarks or acts were taken up, they were whimsically tossed about, assuming different laughable shapes and meanings. Explanations and self-defence only gave him a wider scope. The play would almost invariably end in some delicate and subtly worded epigram, full of wisdom and kindly tolerance.

At times the talk would start by his making some paradoxical statement which one was forced to challenge. Again he had the fun of tossing it about, looking at it from a score of different angles, always summing up with some whimsical little bit of wisdom—another epigram.

I was a Slade student at that time and had to meet much friendly banter on “modern methods,” but that would end with the remark: “If you are hungry you will get on; hunger is what matters.”

I remember, too, the thrill when he took us for a little walk. From being an ordinary girl I was changed to a princess. He joined us—so elegant, so jaunty—with light spats, his topper, as always, slightly on one side. It was not an ordinary “walk”—he handed us down Portland Place, he steered us like a highly finished dancer among the crowds in Oxford Street, avoiding for us any possible jar or confusion. He talked of things we liked, and brought us back thinking very highly of ourselves!

His movements, like his talk, had an exquisite deference, delicacy and precision. With all his charm there was nothing of the fop about him, he was quite un-self-conscious. His speech, his movements, his dress were the natural expression of himself.

The first time Sir David saw Orchardson was at a banquet in Edinburgh, given by the Royal Scottish Academy.

When Orchardson was announced, he entered slowly and deliberately, two stairs at a time. Some years after Sir David remarked to Orchardson that he had thought then he looked more like an Austrian officer than an artist.

“How strange you should say that,” replied Orchardson. “My mother was an Austrian.”

Sir David was invited frequently to Orchardson’s studio. On one occasion Orchardson was engaged on his picture “Mme Récamier” and on “Napoleon at St. Helena.” Sir David visited the studio the day before pictures had to be sent in to the Academy. Orchardson was in an exhausted condition and stopped for a few minutes to rest during tea. Sir David was struck by his overgrown hair, which spread across his forehead like a wreath. On each occasion also he found parts of the canvas untouched—an important head as a white egg,^[1] whilst the draperies belonging to the figure were completed and the picture otherwise finished.

Sometimes his methods puzzled his sitters. He painted Howard Colls, the celebrated litigant, regarding the rights of Ancient Lights. This portrait was a presentation one. But the sitter, who was a great admirer of Orchardson, came in agitation to Sir David, telling him that the portrait was not getting on. All that the artist had done the first day was to draw on a piece of paper with a pointed pencil, looking from time to time at the results with a hand-mirror. The next sitting was for work on the canvas proper. At the end of the sitting Colls expressed his surprise that it had only resulted in one eye being painted. On being told that the other eye would be painted the following day he got accustomed to view the progress of the portrait as reaching completion by such stages. This was a method usually adopted by the painter and also by the Pre-Raphaelites.

Orchardson’s painting was very thin, so much so that sometimes his canvases were barely covered. But it was direct painting, luminous, and all in beautiful harmony of colour, which was very much associated with Orchardson’s own feeling for colour. In spite of this thin painting, his pictures have stood the test of time without deterioration in colour or cracking, whilst pictures painted in a much more robust pigment display have met a different fate.

Edwin Abbey, R.A., was one of his last sitters. He painted the portrait when he was practically dying and so weak that he left out one of the letters of his own signature. The picture itself is one of great beauty.

Sir David tells of an interesting episode in the painting of Orchardson’s picture, “Mrs Siddons in the Studio of Sir Joshua Reynolds.” All the different celebrities—Dr Johnson, Goldsmith, Garrick, etc., had been painted, and the picture was complete in all respects with the exception of Sir Joshua, for whom the artist had failed to get a sitter to satisfy him with regard to a likeness. Orchardson said in despair to his wife that he did not know how to get a model for Sir Joshua. She, always quick and helpful, answered, “Why not David Murray?”

This was on a Sunday, and Orchardson just crossed over from his own house to Sir David’s studio to ask when he could sit. Sir David answered, “Now.” Orchardson immediately set to work on Sir Joshua, and in two sittings the figure was complete. Sir David’s likeness to the portrait of Sir Joshua by himself had often been remarked upon by his friends.

The Life of Sir William Quiller Orchardson

My father was born in Edinburgh in 1831; most of his friends thought 1835, but he neither knew nor cared; and when his children asked for a day to celebrate, he said that three friends claimed his birthday to be the same as theirs, so he would choose his favourite friend’s day, Pettie’s, March 27th. Years after he explained that his memory never retained anything unimportant nor forgot anything important. I dared to correct him by asking “Wouldn’t it be more correct to say you have an absent-minded memory?” He marched up and down the studio with his head in the clouds, then suddenly stood still and laughed a little. “Yes,” he said, “not merely more correct, but absolutely correct, I think.”

About 1836.

See a first picture; a little fellow standing at his father’s knee—he has no mother—asking questions. A delicately beautiful child, yet not delicate; tall and slender with fair waving hair, big blue eyes, dazzling complexion of pink and white; a shy retiring spirit with a most robust strength of will. Very serious just now. “Father, I saw pictures in a shop-window to-day; how are they made?” His father explains a little, is eagerly interrupted: “Could I make pictures?” “Yes.”

Pencil, paper, ardent heart, eager hand, observant eye—behold! a picture of promise.

Another picture—school-time:

1837-1845.

A dreamer of dreams, far away in the clouds, star-gazing. A crowd of other boys sporting and fighting together—fighting seems to have been the chief amusement—“Hi, Bill,” shouts one, “come and fecht.”

“ ‘Bill’ Orchardson does not hear.” Says another boy: “Huh, leave him alane, he’s seein’ visions.”

The cry is taken up: “Huh, he’s seein’ visions!” Which wakes young Bill from his reverie and he proceeds to fight with great energy and resource.

In school hours young Orchardson has an easy time; he has only to read his lessons to know them; and also to have opinions of his own about them which, however, he is usually too shy to express. The class sits on forms on three sides of a square. “Bill” Orchardson is entitled to sit at the head of the class and rises there every day; yet every morning he is found snugly hiding in the corner where the forms join, with two boys sitting well forward to cover his movements. He is very busy with relays of copy-books that come in turn from all the boys, and each gets a drawing, the favourite being a coach and four.

At last the “dominie,” douce man, with apparently more of kindness than of discipline in him, discovers Orchardson’s absence from his rightful place, and on reflection remembers it is by no means the first time.

“William Orchardson, stand up!”

The boy shyly emerges from behind his two friends and stands with downcast eyes, and copy-book hidden behind him. The dominie continues:

“You were at the head of your class yesterday and the day before, indeed every day; how is it you are always back in the corner? And what is that you are hiding behind you? Bring that copy-book to me.”

Orchardson advances, shy, shamed, but fearless, and hands in the book. The dominie looks through the book—coaches, ships, castles, horses, dogs—there are more drawings than lessons; he enquires if there are any more drawings; many are produced; he looks up at the painfully blushing, handsome face beside him.

“You draw much, Bill?” he asks kindly.

“Yes, sir,” Bill stammers, blushing more than ever.

The dominie looks slowly over the drawings again; then very gently he says:

“Orchardson, you may go back to your corner.”

The favourite scholar evidently as well as the cleverest.

That quiet “Go back to your corner” is, I think, the first recognition of Orchardson’s genius.

The name Orchardson is a corruption of Urquhartson of the Clan Urquhart of Glen Urquhart, a valley in Inverness-shire leading down into Loch Ness. An ancestor visited England where the tongue-tied Sassanach was unable to pronounce the guttural Urquhartson and called it Urkurtson, thence Urchartson and finally Orchardson, Orchadson, Orchison, Orchartson. I have seen various spellings in the highlands. Our Orchardson went to Forfarshire and my grandfather came thence to Edinburgh, where he joined the merchant-tailoring firm of Meyer and Quiller, first as employee and then as partner and son-in-law.

Photo T. & R. Annan
WISHART’S LAST COMMUNION, 1853
By kind permission of F. C. Buist, Esq.

The firm specialised in tartans, and my grandfather became an authority on the subject which indirectly had to do with what my father described as “the happiest day of my boyhood,” the day it was settled that he should go to an art school. John Sobieski Stuart (“The Chevalier Stuart”) published in 1843 an illustrated book entitled Costumes of the Clans. Young Orchardson having, it is said, copied one of the drawings showed it to the Chevalier, who admired it so much that he endorsed the boy’s application for admission to the Trustees Academy.

In 1707 the Act of Union set apart certain moneys for fostering Scottish manufactures, etc. In course of time such help became unnecessary and part of the money was used for the upkeep of a school of design, called the Trustees Academy, which finally became an art school.

About 1846.

On his first day at this school Orchardson wandered round in his dreamy way, and finally put up his easel in the life school. The curator found him there and ordered him to the antique room, the place for beginners. The “beginner” bowed politely, went on with his work, and was in the same place when the curator came back.

“Mr Orchardson, I told you to go to the antique.”

Mr Orchardson explained, blushing, shy, courteous, but determined, that he had decided not to draw in the antique, but to paint in the life. Such obstinacy and disobedience accompanied by such a courteous manner so astonished the curator that he said nothing and went round to look at the refractory student’s work. A look at the drawing, a glance at the embarrassed but determined boy, then a long critical gaze; finally he walked off without a word, and thereafter young Orchardson was left in peace to work as he pleased. When my Father told me the incident he was still embarrassed and ashamed of his misbehaviour, and ended: “What else could I do? I knew what I wanted to do then as now, and I had to do it.”

In 1850 Robert Scott Lauder was appointed curator, an event which proved of very great importance in the art world. Not only Orchardson but Chalmers, Herdman, Pettie, MacWhirter, M’Taggart, Peter Graham, Tom Graham and Hugh Cameron all came under his extraordinary influence; an influence so strong that the work of his pupils became “The Scottish School,” recognizable as such by the veriest amateur.

On my Father being asked for a description of Lauder’s teaching, he replied that he practised “the wise neglect” of Fuseli. “Lauder, in fact, was a good master because he never ‘taught,’ because he never interfered. When he arrived we waited nervously for his criticisms as he came round behind the double row of easels. At last he reached mine, and I stood aside while he leant over the back of the seat looking at my work. ‘Yes,’ he said at last, ‘yes,’ and then began to talk about the weather and other matters.”

It is difficult to understand how so “douce” a man as Lauder could have had so great an influence, especially if he did not actively criticize. I think perhaps it was the wonder student who escaped criticism. “Only a boy-student’s practice work, but how wonderfully perfect! Just an arm and hand—or hand and wrist or so—or a shoulder in perspective, but each a thing of beauty and a work of one who seemed even then to have had little left to learn of the mere technique of his craft!”^[1]

This is a criticism written in 1907, but his fellow-students have often told me of the wonder, almost awe, with which they regarded the precision and delicacy of his boy-work.

About the age of fifteen or sixteen he went for a holiday in Arbroath staying with aunts, I think, where he made the acquaintance of an old sea captain, a great sea fisher and owner of a small schooner.

At five o’clock in the morning this quaint pair, old sea dog and embryo artist, would meet on the pier, the former Captain, the latter Crew, and with cunning skill would work the schooner out of the crowded harbour to the open sea. The Captain kept one elbow on the tiller, one eye on the sails, what was left of him helped the Crew to bait the lines with mussels. The new hand soon became an expert—quick at learning seamanship as at everything else. They caught mackerel chiefly, but occasionally had exciting hauls of other and bigger fish; my Father remembered one in particular, a mystery fish that they towed for miles before they could get in near enough to gaff, and when at last it got close enough, its own weight tore through the gaff, broke the line, and it disappeared. It was washed ashore next day, and proved to be a turbot six feet across, and with a great gash almost cutting it in half.

At ten o’clock at night the fishers returned, steering by the rose window in Arbroath Abbey (like the professional fishers), and were met on the pier by a crowd of people, come for the distribution of the day’s takings. Then the old sailor rolled off to his cottage and my Father ran home; when he awoke in the morning to hear the clock striking five and fishing time, he generally found himself lying half-dressed, fallen across the bed.

It must have been sometime after his return from one of these visits that he wrote the following letter to I know not whom:

On the back of this is written the following beginning of a letter:

Climbing was another “ploy” at this time. I remember well his vivid description of how he climbed the Salisbury Crags—supposedly unclimbable—and how his schoolfellows down below nearly caused him to fall when he was half-way up at a particularly dangerous spot. The rock on which he was standing gave way and he was left hanging by his hands. The shriek the boys gave as the stone came bounding amongst them, and then their directing shouts nearly caused my Father to loosen his hold and look down; fortunately the jerk of the fall had caused one arm to get half wedged in a crevice, which perhaps saved him. At any rate he reached the top; but so far as I know, never again attempted so dangerous a climb. His climbing capacity proved useful, however, for when his sister took to sleep-walking on the roof he was able to follow her right on to the parapet of the tall Edinburgh house, without fear of falling, and was able to bring her safely inside again.

Which reminiscence produced a climbing tale concerning his father.

My Grandfather as a boy spent much time bird-nesting, and climbing with several companions in Forfarshire. At last there was only one climb left and one nest worth thinking about—an eagle’s nest up an inaccessible cliff. They tried it this way, they tried it that, and my Grandfather got the furthest but was always stopped by an impossible ledge, till finally this eagle’s nest became an obsession with him, and he thought of it by day and dreamt of it by night. One night he had an unusually vivid dream; that he had not merely reached the ledge but had crossed it, climbed up to the nest, driven off the eagle, successfully climbed down again and brought the precious nest home and placed it under his bed; then, still in his dream, he got into bed again and slept. When he awoke in the morning the dream was still so vivid that in order to assure himself it was nonsense, he looked under the bed—and there was the nest. A sleep-walker can face risks impossible to a waking person.

My Father’s steady head more than once nearly got him into trouble afterwards. He was visiting the Shetland Islands and walking one day with a friend on a high cliff, when he suddenly thought he would like to go to the edge in order to see over. Leading down to the edge there was a slippery grass slope over which he crawled and then lay down with his head hanging over the precipice, and watched the waves breaking on the rocks and the gulls whirling seven hundred feet below. He was so fascinated by the strange silent spectacle that he lay there for a long time, quite forgetful of his dangerous position. His friend becoming impatient called him, and he suddenly realized that his head had become too heavy (so he expressed it) and was gradually overbalancing him. It was only with the greatest difficulty that he crept back to safety.

Another time he was visiting, I forget where, and came across a pier in the building. There was a single plank running right out to the end, and he walked along it to enjoy the breakers. It was only when he turned to go home that he realized the narrowness of his path, and felt, for the first and, I believe, only time in his life, a sudden access of vertigo. He waited hoping it would go off, but finding it only increase, he fixed his eyes on a distant object and crossed safely, not daring to look down.

One of my Father’s friends at this time was an art student called Ebsworth, with whom he often tramped for miles across the Pentland Hills. They discussed the scene—the purple heather, the sunset, the effects of light on colour, my Father doubtless indicating pictures with his thumb, pressing imaginary canvases; they discussed everything that art students invariably discuss, but always wound up with the recitation by Ebsworth of part of a Scott novel, a poem perhaps, or other literary masterpiece. In this way my Father said he “read” quite a lot of great works, Ebsworth being able to recite a great many—he could repeat anything by heart that he had once read. Once for a test my Father read him a newspaper article, and then asked him to recite it backwards, which he did without mistake. Mr. Ebsworth failed as a painter and became a parson with a living in Yorkshire. My Father once laughingly told him that if ever he became a rich man and wanted a library, he would employ Ebsworth instead—he would make reference so easy! My Father’s own memory was rather remarkable. He read all Scott as a young boy; the first being The Black Dwarf, read by him to his father when the latter was ill. He was so enchanted with the tale that his father suggested Ivanhoe next, which was even more fascinating, with the result that he read all the Waverley Novels one after the other. He never read them again, yet he knew all about them, and in many instances could repeat the very words. He read Shakespeare once through before he was twenty and never again, yet could repeat all the most beautiful passages off by heart. It was difficult to get him started but once wound up he would go on for quite a long time. On anyone venturing to express admiration for his long memory, he would smile and say: “Ah! but Ebsworth . . .” and then would follow the reminiscence of the Pentland walks and many other tales if the listener only knew how “to work the oracle.”

Dancing was a favourite amusement, and he used to tell how on one occasion, after dancing all night, he and some companions ran to the top of Arthur’s Seat (as they were, in evening dress) to watch the sun rise. My Father, determined not to be late, ran the whole way without stopping, with the not unnatural result that on reaching the top he fell down unable either to breathe or move. It is possible that this was the cause of the heart trouble he suffered from late in life, and for which no one could account. He ran twice up Arthur’s Seat, the other time being in order to view from above a thunderstorm that broke over Edinburgh. That was before flying men were even thought of, and it was a stranger sight then than now to view a storm below one, while enjoying serene unclouded sunshine.

Fencing was another amusement that he followed enthusiastically. He belonged to the school of Angelo, and always maintained that the thumb was a much stronger and therefore a better guide than the forefinger. But having sprained his wrist very badly he was unable to continue, so took to boxing instead. He went to a professional boxer for lessons, and on his first day the pugilist attacked him somewhat roughly, after showing him the guards. The new pupil did not appreciate the rough handling, and, well, he did not exactly lose his temper, but at any rate he attacked suddenly and furiously, and so surprised his teacher that he drove him to the wall. Said the boxer: “I never knew a young man with a good nose, but what he knew how to protect it.”

Orchardson’s appearance was not such as to inspire enthusiasm in a professional pugilist; he was rather tall—5 ft. 10 inches—and his slenderness and upright carriage made him appear taller; his shoulders were exceptionally broad, a fact that greatly pleased him; his hands and wrists, feet and ankles were very small and finely shaped, but muscular, as he was all over; a doctor once told him that if he struck, say, a wall with all his force, he would probably break his arm. In fact he was a Highlander. His face with its delicate colour and fine features suggested delicacy; indeed, two dear old ladies always shook their heads sadly over him when he was calling, and told him he would die before he was twenty-one. His fellow students and artist friends made great use of his head as a model for girls and for the head of Christ. One man was hunting for a particularly fine type of nose; said another: “What ails ye at Orchardson’s nose?” His chin was small but his jaw was square and strong, and the man’s whole air gave an impression of force and enthusiasm, which, combined with an exceptionally charming and courteous manner, made all who met him realize that here was a personality.

He wore his hair rather long with the quaint result that once, when it was clipped short—a French crop—by an energetic but mistaken barber in Holland, he came home to Edinburgh quite unrecognizable, and his friends had to stare hard before they were sure of him. He never cut his moustache, which grew to be of the kind called military; and never wore a beard except once, on the recommendation of a friend, but he soon took it off again as being too thick and troublesome.

In spite of his delicate appearance my Father never seems to have suffered from anything worse than occasional attacks of indigestion, except once, when there was a bad epidemic of cholera in Edinburgh, and he fell a victim. He collapsed in the street, but managed to call a cab and give his address. He was carried into his Father’s house and given brandy at his gasped request, but only in a small glass; with much difficulty he managed to get hold of the bottle and drank off more than half of it, to his family’s horror. They were consoled, however, by the doctor telling them that his patient would have been dead before his arrival had it not been for the brandy.

To someone unknown and undated. A scrap:

He never even suffered from toothache he told me, except once; he went to a dentist to get the bad tooth out and was drawn with the tooth round and round the room, which decided him never to visit a dentist again. This, no doubt, accounts for the following note in his handwriting:

Which is closely followed by this note on fire:

In the same-aged writing is the following—a lecture to himself:

In after years my Father described these as his “young and curly days,” and they certainly seem to have been very strenuous both in work and play; the extreme concentration on the work and the rapidity making up for usually short hours. There is a tale which illustrates this particularly well.

At the age of twenty-two, one afternoon three days before the last sending-in day for the Royal Scottish Academy, he was working at a picture he had just begun—“Wishart’s Last Exhortation”—when he was interrupted by his late teacher and present friend, Robert Scott Lauder. One head was painted, the rest of the picture sketched-in in charcoal. Scott Lauder was so much struck by the sketch and the finished head that, of course, he wanted to know why the picture had not been finished in time for the R.S.A. Orchardson shyly admitted that perhaps it was not so bad, that he had forgotten all about the exhibition and, as a matter of fact, had not been working very hard; he added that if so excellent a critic as Mr Lauder thought the picture good enough, he could finish it in time. Of course, Scott Lauder laughed—impossible to finish thirteen figures, including many hands in three days. However, when his visitor had gone, young Orchardson set to work. He painted till dusk, then called his sister Mary and asked if she would light up for him; and would she be so very kind as to keep him supplied with coffee all night? History does not relate whether the sister was surprised or not, probably not; but, at any rate, she looked after him, keeping him supplied with food and coffee, opening the shutters at dawn, closing them at dusk, until she was exhausted. Orchardson worked on and on, scarcely pausing even to eat, never sleeping, never resting. At the end of three days and three nights the picture was finished and sent off; and you might suppose that the painter went to bed. Not at all; he squared his shoulders and marched ten miles across the Pentlands. I say “marched” advisedly, for the word describes his walk exactly—alert and vigorous as well as light and graceful.

The picture was accepted, and when Orchardson went to the Academy on touching-up day, he found it was hung on the line. On my asking if there was not a great deal of finishing to be done, he replied that no one was more surprised than himself, but everything was finished with the most meticulous care except one halberd, which had been forgotten, in a corner; even a vase and a shawl and all the hands were highly finished. People asked him why he had not hidden the hands like many if not most painters; and he could only reply that the hands were there and so had to be painted. By which he meant that in his vision of the picture the eleven hands were, he considered, correctly placed, and he could not alter them for the sake of a little less work—or, indeed, for any reason. One of the women is wearing a lace shawl, painted with Pre-Raphaelite precision. Even a shawl, if it belonged to the original vision, was sacred.

George Wishart was condemned by Cardinal Beaton to be burned at St. Andrew’s. On his way to the stake, passing the apartments of the Captain of the Castle, he was requested to breakfast with his family and a few friends. Having desired them to sit down he discoursed to them concerning the Lord’s Supper. After his having blessed the Bread and Wine he dispensed the Sacrament. This was the first time the Sacrament was administered in Scotland in the Protestant form.

Wishart’s last exhortation is being listened to most attentively by his small congregation and the armed guards, the night before he was burnt at the stake by Cardinal Beaton in 1546. The preacher is thinking earnestly of his words and of his fate not at all, in spite of the prison walls of St. Andrew’s.

The two figures on the left appear to have been painted from the artist himself, and from Paul Chalmers, who is sitting at the table in the full light of the lantern.

Photo T. & R. Annan
SCENE FROM “PEVERIL OF THE PEAK,” 18—
By kind permission of the Glasgow Art Gallery.

In 1851 my Father and Grandfather went to London together for the great Exhibition. I can find no written records of this visit, but remember my Father telling me that he was impressed by two things, the vast size of the Exhibition and the extreme badness of the art, which, he said, was dominated by the Prince Consort, who knew nothing whatsoever about art, and had a “merely German” conception of it. The Prince encouraged art, he said, but the wrong kind—Winterhalter, for instance. My Father emphasized this all his life.

At this distance of time and place, it is exceedingly difficult to get into communication with anyone who knew my Father in his youth. But having found a little girl’s letter to “My Darling Bill,” and signed “Chattie,” I had the happy thought to write to Mr MacWhirter’s daughter (Mrs Charles Sims), who wrote to Mr MacKay, R.S.A., to whom I am indebted for a re-introduction to Mrs Ford, who turns out to be “Chattie Clow.” She writes to me as follows:

I wonder how long Orchardson was studying in London. Mrs Ford thinks about two years. But “Wishart’s Last Exhortation” was painted in Edinburgh at 4 Torphichen Street in 1853; and “The Cottage Door” and portrait of “Master Henry Keith” in 1854, at 26 Royal Crescent, where he remained for three years according to the R.S.A. catalogue. “Bill’s” two letters to “Chattie,” dated “London 1854,” and the following invoice:

together with a very youthful poem dated Sunday, October 14th, 1854, 26 Royal Crescent, make me suppose that he was in London for only a few months. I never heard him mention this time in London, but the poem suggests that he enjoyed English Sundays better than Scottish Sabbaths, and that the contrast made the “Bright day of dull repose” very noticeable.

I have no clue of the date of this letter, except the writing and the early signature, beside the general youthfulness and liveliness of it:

It seems to have been a custom in those days to write illustrated letters, often in verse. I am, unfortunately, unable to find any finished letters, but my Father had a habit of composing his letters on scraps of paper, in pencil, and consequently illegible in parts, and, of course, not illustrated. They mostly show the lively side of his character, but as liveliness was a great characteristic of his all his life, that will not matter. He was the life and soul of any party, and needed no spur of drink or smoke; Chalmers used to say: “Orchardson, you are the most unsociable of fellows—you won’t make yourself ill for anybody.” The incongruity of making himself ill and thereby pleasing a friend amused W. Q. O. to the end of his life, and he often told the tale and laughed at it. Of Chalmers, by the way, he had a very great opinion and always said he would have been one of the greatest of modern painters had he lived.

From Orchardson in Dollar, Clackmannan, between 1850 and 1860, to John Pettie:

My Father often stayed with the Cranstouns in Perth, and always retained his friendship for “Old Cranstoun.” The following letter must have been written after one of these visits. Miss Fisher, of course, was only one of his many “flames.”

Mr Drummond does not refer to the above letter, but what he says seems appropriate here. He writes from Perth to W. Q. O. in December 1855, thanking him for “your very clever poetical epistle, which is really very witty and took amazingly—I read it that very night to [illegible] Smith and [illegible] and they enjoyed it vastly. I also read a part to the Widow McGregor and Mr [illegible] and endeavoured to make it thought the sweet bits were meant for the young lady there, Miss Fisher; how far I succeeded I know not, perhaps you may learn that sooner than me.

Pray what is the size of the little gem you are to give me? When you are in a good humour bestow an hour upon it and in the meantime let me know what the subject is.”

I remember when I first went to Edinburgh three ancient maidens living together, sisters, much older than my Father, were pointed out to me as having been early “flames”; tradition said they had never married for love of him. Perhaps the following is addressed to them:

Another letter and another Lady:

Not all the Ladies (there were no Girls in those days) waited for “Bill” to become serious, and clearly he enjoyed being deserted:

And again:

Photo T. & R. Annan
ON THE GRAND CANAL, VENICE, 1871
By kind permission of A. Henderson Bishop, Esq.

Orchardson fell in love once only, at the age of forty-two, and then he married his love. All these early “affairs” were mere “leather and prunella,” as he would himself have said, but they evidently occupied a very considerable amount of time and thought—or perhaps fancy; which is my excuse, besides the character, the poetry and humour shown, for dwelling on them. The following is probably a portion of a letter to a man friend:

So that evidently a lady must be either witty or beautiful to attract “Handsome William.”

In another letter he writes:

I do not know who Berkeley was nor what “this” was, but the ingenuity of so many doubts is intriguing:

Here are some of his early views of love:

Amy, Kate, Sophy, Mary, Helen, Nell, Emily, Isabel, besides Miss Fisher and the charming Three, all come into these “curly” times, and their names and the poems have been preserved by my Mother for this book.

An almost illegible scrawl seems to be an account of a dream picnic “with sunshine dappling the sward,” and several flirtations going on, from which I deduce that flirtatious picnics were frequent amusements.

“I do prefer the City” remained true of Orchardson all his life, but that he greatly appreciated Nature is, I think, shown by the following, which may be called “Winter”:

A passing thought:

When he was about twenty, Orchardson went on a tour with his Father in the Highlands, which no doubt gave rise to the following:

Did he or did he not mind leaving Scotland? This was probably written when he went to London about 1854:

I do not know to which of the many ladies the following was addressed nor does it matter very much, for all these little poems were only passing thoughts:

My Father told me that in his early youth he fully intended to be an explorer and that he read every book on exploration that he could get hold of. He read every newspaper, too, and any new discovery caused him a “pang,” he said, for it meant so much less for him to discover.

“And what made you give up exploration?”

“Oh! well! I had to paint, you know. I had no choice in the matter; it was really rather curious, I chose to explore, yet I had to paint. You see, there are some things one must do.”

Apparently he tried writing, too, and, it would seem, started a story with Rudolf as hero, who lived in a “house which from its general appearance might be judged to embody the quaint, the picturesque and the uncomfortable; if this was the intention, it succeeded to a miracle.” “The one window of Rudolf’s apartment” was in one of the turrets, and he was pensive, but what about does not appear.

To an unknown:

Another scrap of letter:

The following seems to be notes for a speech at the opening of some Scottish Art Exhibition:

Tom Graham and John MacWhirter were amongst his great friends; and Charles Gold, now Sir Charles, cousin and partner of the Gilbey’s (wine merchants), not an artist friend, so I take it that they were what might be called “highjinks friends,” for I gather they had lively times together. Sir Charles Gold wrote in April 1910: “Orchardson and I knew the same people and used to meet each other three or four nights a week. We used also to ride, fence and take long walks together when we were both young and active. I can scarcely believe that those days are fifty years ago!”

But John Pettie was his greatest friend and remained so till his death.

About 1859 or 1860 Orchardson went to Holland and Germany; he sailed from Leith in rough weather which he much enjoyed, although a bad sailor in after life. He landed at Rotterdam, if I remember his telling rightly, and from there went to the Hague and Amsterdam. He was much struck by the cleanliness of the streets, and often laughed at the recollection of the quarrels between the housemaids and the police over the washing of the outsides of the houses; he remembered very well being more or less drenched in the early morning by the energetic housemaids.

He told me he considered that the Dutch people had a right to their country such as no other people could claim to any country, in as much as they had won and kept it from the sea by their own industry, and he thought the little dyke boy a type of the stamina of the people. Of their art he could hardly think too highly, he said; Van Dyck very beautiful and fine, Rubens magnificent but coarse, and Rembrandt almost beyond praise, second only to Titian.

From Holland he went to Germany, travelling up the Rhine I think from the way he spoke of the curious view of the country down below one. Of his travels in Germany I can find no records at all; but he must have been to Heidelberg, as in 1860 he exhibited a picture at the Royal Academy called “Under the Vine—Heidelberg” with the note “in collaboration with J. MacWhirter.” I wonder if Mr MacWhirter joined him there?

And the following letter attests that he was in Dresden; beyond this I can find nothing, although it must have been an important time of learning.

In response to a letter of the Lord Provost of Edinburgh calling for the formation of volunteer companies, a meeting was held on August 4th, 1859. My Father joined and attended regularly. “With Hugh Cameron he had much to do with the designing of the Artists’ company’s uniform, which was rather different from the others.” He never became an officer, not even a non-com.; “indeed, few of those who took a leading part in the formation of the company became officers.” Orchardson was in the second detachment for gun drill, which was carried on at the Corn Exchange, Grass Market.^[1]

Photo T. & R. Annan
MISS MOXON (LADY ORCHARDSON), 1872
By kind permission of the Edinburgh National Gallery.

A tale is attached to this gun drill. My Father was very proud of the skill of his old corps, who knocked out the Regulars’ target in five rounds, and was perhaps a little disdainful of the Regulars, but on considering the point, decided that after all the Volunteers had the better chance, being men of education and training; and as most of them were artists, their eyes, of course, were the most highly trained possible. Here is the little tale contained in the remains of a letter I have found from W. Q. O. to I do not know whom; it has neither beginning nor end; crossed letters, by the way, were his pet aversion, he could not read them, and considered it very rude to give your correspondent so much trouble:

Orchardson was with his company at the Queen’s Park review in Edinburgh in 1860. He said it was a magnificent sight down below Arthur’s Seat; he was marching at the end of his line and had a good view of “The Queen,” as Queen Victoria was always called. Little “Chattie” asked her “darling Bill” what the Queen looked like, and he answered, “She was just like an old lady adding up her accounts.”

The foregoing letter must have been written about the same time as this, following one from his great friend John MacWhirter, scolding him for not answering a letter of invitation to join him in Arran:

Mr Peter Graham, on my writing to him for early recollections, sent me the following shortly before his death:

Mr Graham had told me this tale before, and on my asking my Father if he remembered the incident, thought “No, but possibly yes,” and then laughed, and looking shy, added, “But what better defence could I have made.”

Many of the men who are now famous were young then, and drew for Good Words which must have been beautifully illustrated; Orchardson, besides Millais and many others, was amongst them. F. Borders was a wood engraver of the time and did some of W. Q. O.’s things. Of one of the drawings he reported that the “parties” were pleased with the general effect of the drawing but that they fancied it was hurried as it was done in a mixture of ink and pencil, and the next drawing must be entirely in pencil the same as the Cæsare block. Two subjects were offered, “The Wise Men of the East,” or “John Baptizing the Saviour.” He also remarked he did not quite like the woman’s face.

Edinburgh.

[Probably about 1860.]

And what of work during all these years? There is no mention of it in his letters—or is there once?—nor any record that I can find. Yet, that he worked, and worked hard, is evident, for from 1848 to 1863 he was well represented at the R.S.A., except in 1850 and 1857. Whether he did not send in those years or whether his work was rejected I am unable to say; 1857 was probably the year he travelled in Germany and Holland, so that he may have forgotten to paint a picture for a definite date, and in 1850 he was still only a boy of nineteen.

I do not intend to offer any criticism of my Father’s work; I love it all as I love the man; neither of them quite perfect, but both very nearly so. I should like, however, to point out that as the boy is father to the man, so is the early tentative work but the forerunner of the later unhesitating work; that, though the style increased in breadth, in force, in beauty, yet that his last work is painted “in the same style” as his first. The illustrations will, I hope, show something of this.

Mr McKay, the landscape painter and for long Secretary and Librarian at the Royal Scottish Academy, kindly sent me a list of the pictures W. Q. O. exhibited at the R.S.A. Curiously enough, the “Portrait of the Misses Callander, Wards of the Duke of Atholl,” is not on the list, but Mr McKay writes:

My Father was usually thought impulsive, yet his quickly painted pictures were the result of long and careful thought. I think his coming to London was the result of the same method. It is usually supposed that the London International Exhibition of 1862 brought him to London on the spur of the moment, with just a handbag for luggage. That is true so far as it goes; but several friends, Pettie particularly, had already migrated to the Metropolis, and it is scarcely to be supposed that Orchardson had not thought about the matter, whether he spoke of it or no. There is a letter too from a Mr John Dick, complaining of “all talent leaving Scotland at one fell swoop,” and inviting him and MacWhirter to “come here till I speak to you.” It is probable, too, that his great love for his father would keep him in Edinburgh.

Arrived in London, however, he would find that he was exactly suited to the life of a great-minded metropolis, that London offered greater scope to ambition than Edinburgh, and that he would be able to help his father just as well or even better; and in the end having thought the matter over “in all its aspects” (a favourite expression of his), he would decide to stay, making a sudden announcement to that effect. His thoughts were careful and sustained, his actions quick but only apparently impulsive; they followed his careful thoughts.

My Father’s early life in London is almost a sealed book to me, but a few letters give some glimpses of his successes and struggles. His first address is next door to his great friends, Pettie and Tom Graham.

A friendly letter from Mr A. Binning Munro, dated Edinburgh, November 1862, throws a small light on W. Q. O.’s Edinburgh work. It would appear that Mr Munro threw a good deal of work, i.e. portraits, in the young painter’s way, and that these portraits were not as successful as some previous ones. It is suggested that perhaps the public became more critical rather than that the painter failed to come up to his previous standard. One of the portraits, that of Mrs Drummond, was said to want character, and W. Q. O. was asked to touch it up when he next came to Edinburgh. As, however, he never went back to Edinburgh, except for a few days, it is to be presumed that the portrait was not altered. Lack of character seems a curious criticism in view of my Father’s frequent remark, “Character I must have.”

“Charlie” was W. Q. O.’s younger brother. After going round the world twice he finally emigrated to the United States. He settled for a time in Chicago and became artist, author, lecturer, Socialist, and even stood for the Mayoralty of Chicago once—a Jack of all trades, and master of none, I fancy. I believe he wandered West afterwards. In 1866, W. Q. O. reported to a mutual friend who made enquiries, “Oh, he’s doing well; he combines agriculture with the Fine Arts.”

The following letter is evidently the one referred to above, it is unsigned, but it is in my Father’s own handwriting. My Father had very strong views on the duties of children to parents, and held that children should, if necessary, support parents in old age without question.

Mr Munro wrote back that he rejoiced in this success, and asking for any particularly good critiques to be sent to him. He evidently felt a little anxious owing to the great praise he had given young Orchardson in Edinburgh.

CHARLES MOXON, Esq., 1874
By kind permission of the National Gallery, Millbank.

I should think this letter from John MacWhirter must have been addressed to Sutherland Street; he was in Italy with Mr Hutchinson, the sculptor:

In March of this year (1863), just before this success, he was evidently hard up and received a letter from two old Edinburgh friends, John and Isabella Burr, now settled in London, and whom he had evidently been visiting, saying: “Why did you not mention you were short of cash? We had two pounds in the house and you should have had one.” The letter goes on to say that he, John, was rather suspicious and that he had at once finished a landscape and taken it to Flatow to sell on purpose to get cash to lend his friend, who had had to sell a picture very cheaply. The consolation at the end is quaint, “Never mind, no one will know.”

Enclosed is an unused stamped envelope addressed by John Burr to himself—real friends these, but happily the “enclosed note” did not need to be posted. This was just before the opening of the Royal Academy, and W. Q. O.’s first success in London, success at the first attempt; he was often hard up temporarily afterwards, but that was chiefly through his inability to remember anything about money affairs, until they were forcibly called to his notice by the lack of cash.

In April Burr wrote that his wife thought Orchardson a remarkably punctual business man, but that Edinburgh was not likely to be of the same opinion, and that “the reason I bother you with a receipt is, business men like them; ’tis not like an affair of our own.”

The following amusing letter, which I cannot date exactly, might be either to John Burr or J. Borders; according to her diary my Mother knew both these old “J.B.’s” (“what a jolly man Mr Burr is!”).

In 1863 the late Sir Charles Gold, with whom he had had great times in Edinburgh, sent him an introduction to Alfred Gold, one of the firm of Gilbey and Company, with all of whom W. Q. O. remained friends for the rest of his life.

J. Borders, the Edinburgh engraver, appears to have visited W. Q. O. at 10 Sutherland Street, and the only other “event” I can find is a long and highly complimentary valentine poem addressed to Orchardson, which leads one to suppose that he still enjoyed flirting. The poem was saved by my Mother, and the last verse is as follows:

As in Edinburgh he did not stay long in one studio, so in London. By June 1863 he had changed his address to Berners Street. While there he received an invitation to stay with William Coleman at Rake’s Farm, Abinger; apparently he invited himself “according to promise.” Mr. Coleman wrote to say he would be very pleased to see him:

While W. Q. O. lived in Berners Street he appears to have rescued two women, his landlady and her daughter, when the house was burnt down. I only once got him to speak of it in answer to my question as to whether he ever saved anybody’s life, and then he spoke so modestly that I got no story at all, merely a general impression of a blazing staircase, up which even the firemen would not go, with a young man, his head well covered, racing up alone and then coming back supporting, half carrying, the two terrified women to safety.

The following unfinished letter evidently refers to this fire; what a pity it leaves out the rescue, of which my Mother also told me; other friends knew of it too:

Having been burnt out of his Berners Street rooms his next move, I think, was to Howland Street, off Tottenham Court Road, and from there he joined his friends Pettie, Tom Graham and C. E. Johnson, in setting up house at 37 Fitzroy Square. Q. O., as he was called by his friends at this time, occupied the front drawing-room as a studio, Pettie the back drawing-room, Tom Graham the dining-room.

It was here he painted “The Challenge” (1864), which won Wallis’s hundred guinea prize at his French Gallery, Piccadilly. A great triumph for a “new man.”

While Orchardson and Pettie lived together, their pictures were often mistaken one for the other by the critics as well as by the general public. “The Challenge” in particular was without hesitation acclaimed as a specially good Pettie. Years after I asked my Father if I was wrong in being unable to see more than a distant resemblance. He said he thought not, and added he had always had very definite ideas of how he intended to paint and invariably practised that particular manner and no other, and he could not imagine himself imitating anyone, either consciously or unconsciously; at the same time, many people saw or thought they saw a resemblance, but Orchardson would always paint like Orchardson, his own way, for the simple reason that he could not possibly paint any other person’s way.

The four friends took it in turn to housekeep, and no one quite knew which was the most remarkable housekeeper of the four.

When it came to my Father’s turn, a present of figs had just been sent to add to the bachelors’ menu. My Father was always a late riser and, as usual, the cook came to his bedroom door for orders; amongst other things she reminded him of the keg of figs.

“Yes,” said he, “but what do you do with figs?”

“A pudding is the usual thing, sir.”

“Very well, then, make a pudding.”

At dinner that night at the sweet course appeared a huge and wonderful affair. The four friends looked and looked again, examined into the strange thing and finally sent for the cook. The housekeeper-of-the-week inquired into the nature of the novel dish. Cook, flustered, replied that it was the pudding he had ordered.

“A pudding?” said my Father, “did I order a pudding?”

“Yes, sir; to be made of the keg of figs.”

The four regarded the pudding with renewed interest, and cook continued: “I just put in a layer of figs, then a layer of suet, and so on till the figs were finished; it is very good, sir.”

“I think perhaps you will appreciate it more than we should; allow me to present it to you,” said my Father, picking up the pudding and presenting it to her in his most courteous and grandest manner.

Cook retired with her pudding, and the following day, being asked what she had done with it, she replied:

“I ate it last night, sir.”

“Not alone, and still alive?”

“Yes, sir, quite alone.”

Years after my Father’s trust in human nature received a rude shock on someone asking him when he had told the tale: “But what about the policeman?”

It is never easy to housekeep for artists, they are untidy and happy-go-lucky, and these four friends were fond of animals besides, my Father particularly. Even as a child he had been able to tame wild mice and wild birds. He told me that once when he was quite small the family was sitting in the drawing-room, when the maid came in to say that a mouse had been caught and would the children like to see it drowned?

Of course, thoughtless children would, and they all trooped down to the kitchen, where the mouse was dropped out of the trap into a pail of water, and the children watched while it swam round and round vainly trying to get out. Suddenly sensitive little “Bill” realized that the mouse was in pain and nearly dead, and he could bear it no longer. He picked up the mouse out of the water, wrapped it in a piece of flannel and put it by the fire to recover, fondling it at intervals, all the children and his father watching him. By and by the mouse recovered, poked its nose and bright eyes out of the flannel, ate a little food, and finally ran away down its hole. Thereafter “Bill” had only to tap three times on the floor for the mouse to come out and be fed and fondled. It would only come for Bill’s three taps, and was quite a show to friends of the house.

He generally had a tame sparrow or a siskin, and these once wild birds would come out of their cages, sit on his shoulder, eat out of his hands, and go for walks with him, flying away for a while, but always coming back to his shoulder and the cage. A canary he once had was not a great favourite with his friends owing to its habit of alighting on any visitor’s head and plucking out hairs for nest-making; this canary lived at large in the studio and also went for walks. Most of these pets seem to have fallen victims to the various cats.

At Fitzroy Square several pets were tried, a monkey and a parrot, I believe, and, of course, a cat; and one day they received a present of three fine white rats.

The rats usually lived in a cage, but in the evening were let out at the end of dinner; the four friends would join hands and the rats would race round and round on their shoulders.

If visitors were present their shoulders were also utilized as a race-course. One of the rats would often sit inside my Father’s sleeve with just its nose and pink eyes showing, which seems to have rather alarmed the fashionable “I’m-frightened-of-a-mouse” ladies of the period.

A Mr F. Brown writes on November 16th, 1863, that he has done some commission requested by W. Q. O., and adds: “I hope your club will be successful and carried on in a friendly spirit; I think it is a capital thing and fraught, if well conducted, with unspeakable advantage to all concerned.” So presumably the following letter is to Mr. Brown and probably W. Q. O. went to Edinburgh to see his father and then on to Dollar for sketches.

While still in Edinburgh my Father belonged to a quartet in which he played the second violin. He gave up playing so completely that I never heard whether he played well or ill, but the possession of a Cremona violin, which he lost during one of his many house removals, presupposes a pretty good player. There is no mention of his violin playing in London, but only of his playing the piano. About 1863, a Mrs Kate Richardson wrote: “John said you are very great at the piano now,” and a little later in Fitzroy Square he is pictured as spending much time at the piano and extraordinarily little at his easel, especially considering the amount of work he turned out. I myself never heard him, and one day asked him why he had given it up, and he told me it was because painting being a sedentary occupation, his recreation must be active, and as to play either violin or piano well required an immense amount of practice, he decided to give up both and devote all his spare time to active sports.

So about this time he joined the Chiddingfold Hunt, a yeoman pack hunted by four brothers Sadler, one of whom, so my Father told me, broke his neck at a stiff jump, and not merely remained alive but recovered and continued to hunt, with his head resting on his shoulder.

When I was a child my Father used to tell great hunting tales, but it is so long ago that I can remember almost nothing of them, except the sense that he had enjoyed the runs immensely and that he was nearly always in at the finish. In answer to my childish questions about the kill he said he did not see the fun of hunting unless you rode hard, took all the jumps possible, and were in at the death.

“But isn’t hunting cruel?”

Hare hunting is, he told me, because puss is always frightened and consequently loses what poor wits he has; but the fox is cunning and, in my Father’s opinion, has a certain pleasure in pitting his wits against his enemies, and being a fighting animal death by fighting is not cruel but only more or less natural.

On my asking which was his best horse he said that his light weight made him a “treat for any horse,” and he thought a very old white hunter that he rode for one season was the cleverest though not actually the best—“horses are usually stupid, you know, donkeys have far more brains. For instance, donkeys will take shelter from a storm, but horses never do, they merely turn their backs to it.”

Photo Grove & Boulton
LADY ORCHARDSON, 1875
By kind permission of Sir Edmund Davis.

But this old horse really seemed to have brains. He was too old for high jumps but was so clever at finding gaps in the hedges that he and his master were always well up. All the Hunt prophesied disaster with so old a horse and one day the two were seen to take a jump and then disappear. “There’s Orchardson down at last” they all exclaimed in triumph, forgetful for the moment of possible death or damage; but presently Orchardson rode up and explained that the old horse had made a mistake and had jumped over the hedge into a lane that proved much deeper than he thought, but had landed on his feet, stumbled and barked his nose.

“Ah! down at last; it’s what you deserve, riding an old horse like that.”

“Down!” said my Father, “we weren’t down—look at his knees!”

And true enough, the old chap’s knees were perfectly clean; there was just a smudge of mud and blood on his nose; his rider had contrived to pull him up in the nick of time with the clever old horse’s understanding help.

During one of these hunting years he bought a horse to train as a hunter himself; it was a great success and W. Q. O. rode it throughout the season without a fall or any kind of mishap. But on the last day of the season he had a whole chapter of accidents. He had ordered a cab to come early to catch a train at Waterloo; the cab did not come, the rain poured in torrents. After a long search the servant found another cab.

“Half a sovereign if you catch the train at Waterloo,” said Orchardson. It was too early for traffic so cabby drove at a great pace and his fare was just in time to see the train go out as he reached the platform. However, he found another train to a different station, telegraphed for a carriage to meet him and arrived in time. His groom was waiting with his horse and away he went.

“Everything was slippery with rain,” said my Father, “so when we came to a hedge with an unsuspected ditch on the other side my horse came down on the edge of it and turned a somersault—so did I. Having always believed that if ever I fell like that I should break my neck, I was glad to find that my preconceptions were quite wrong and that I could fall on my neck with impunity. I had two other similar falls on that day of mishaps, but neither my horse nor I was in the least hurt.”

In 1865 Mr Pettie’s marriage to Miss Lizzie Bossom broke up the Fitzroy Square ménage, a rather remarkable one and quite celebrated at the time in art circles and amongst art dealers. All four men, young as they were, were already well known, and Orchardson and Pettie, greatest of friends and friendly rivals, especially in other people’s eyes, became celebrated. Their supposed rivalry lessened as they grew older and went their different ways, but their friendship remained the greatest possible.

Mr Pettie died comparatively young, when I was a schoolgirl, so naturally I did not see him much, but his personality must have been a strong one, for I remember him as clearly to-day as if I had seen him yesterday—extraordinarily blue eyes, a nondescript nose, fresh complexion, and friendly energetic ways; he simply radiated energy and kindliness.

Mr Tom Graham was a frequent visitor at our house; he was quite evidently devoted to Q. O., but I think he felt his own lack of success very deeply, and his face was always a little sad. In later years I saw Mr Johnson fairly frequently, but somehow always had a little difficulty in recognising him, and always wondered what he was doing in that galère. In fact, I thought he could not have belonged to the Fitzroy Square ménage, but he told me himself that he did.

But of course when they were young and full of hope they must have been as lively and happy as the other two.

A contemporary description of W. Q. O. in the form of an acrostic by one of his many lady-loves may be appropriate here. The first verse makes William and announces anonymity:

Mrs Peter Graham writes to me that she often met my Father during the first three years of her married life, both in her own house and at friends—this was before his marriage.

A list of visitors at Fitzroy Square with a description of each might be amusing, but as I have no means of making a complete list, and to omit some would be to offend, I leave it to the imagination of the reader and will merely say that the company consisted of all the liveliest artists and artists’ friends of that period; not to mention most of the big picture dealers.

After the break-up of the Fitzroy Square ménage my Father moved Campden Hill way.

“Christopher Sly,” exhibited by Wallis—French Gallery—dates the following two letters 1866:

[A note in pencil.]

Nearly all Orchardson’s early works contain an element of comedy, but I think Christopher Sly is the only one that contains “rather a large dose of the comic element.” He painted seven Shakesperean pictures, I think, the last being “Jessica,” in 1877. During the happiest part of his life he painted tragedy and then later comedy, or at least things with a touch of humour in them, such as “Shopping in the Honeymoon,” “Rivalry,” “Reflections,” “The Enigma,” and the “Parting of the Ways.” Three late unfinished works contain tragedy, “The Last Dance,” “The Widow,” and “Solitude”—the last two different versions of the same idea. The most tragic of all, “The Borgia,” was a late work.

Having occupied six studios in the six years he had been in London, it was now time to move again. This time he went to Kensington, to Phillimore Gardens, for a studio, and for lodgings to Bedford Gardens, according to my Mother, who also states in a back-of-a-letter note that he “stayed” with the Archers, “who lived in Phillimore Gardens.” He was probably at all three places.

My Grandfather, C. Moxon, also lived there, with his wife and two children, a few doors from the Archers. In 1867, or perhaps early in 1868, Mr Archer, the artist, introduced his Edinburgh artist friend Orchardson—a rising man—to Charles Moxon, who bought “Prince Henry, Poins and Falstaff” for £400.

From the first the artistic business man and the young artist liked each other so that they became lifelong friends; and little Nellie Moxon, a small, shy, dark-eyed, dark-haired schoolgirl of about thirteen, with a habit of twiddling her innumerable buttons, obtained a hero. Charles Moxon was a shrewd Yorkshireman, humorous, kindly—one of those people to whom others always came for advice and sympathy. Asked by Orchardson to explain the secret, he answered with a twinkle in his eye that he first found out the enquirer’s own opinion and then advised accordingly! He was very artistic, and had wished to be a painter, but being unable to afford the training, became a business man, a decorator, instead, and postponed painting till his old age.

He was successful in a modest way, and amongst other places he decorated Buckingham Palace, over which he lost a good deal of money.

Besides Orchardson, Pettie, MacWhirter and Tom Graham were frequent visitors, billiards and witty talk being the amusements. The house was beautifully decorated, and furnished in classical Renaissance style with antique furniture, which provided artistic eyes with much pleasure and artistic tongues with much to talk and argue about.

At billiards my Grandfather was very brisk and lively when he was winning, but when he was losing he felt quite tired, so he said, with that merry twinkle in his bright blue eyes—blue eyes and black hair, a very handsome man. As he had broken both feet in a fall from a scaffolding when young, no doubt there was a substratum of truth in the little familiar joke.

W. Q. O. played pretty constantly both there and elsewhere, and at one time could make a 100 break with ease, always playing with a hat on to shade his eyes.

He played with Roberts and B [?] one of whom remarked to him, “If you would only take the trouble you would make a billiard player.” But Orchardson always quoted the saying that to play billiards too well is a sign of a misspent youth—he did not approve of professional games, he considered games should be relaxation from work.

As he grew older my Grandfather exchanged billiards for whist, a game at which my Grandmother had certain rules of her own, one being that trumps must always be held and on no account played till the very last except for trumping purposes. If she won, life was a very gay affair, but if she lost she would shake her head sadly as she rose, folding her hands and saying: “Well, well, somebody must be cross.”

My Father would go into fits of laughter at the mere recollection—her humour was so unconscious. He told my Mother that as a boy he used to make himself quite ill with laughing.

Photo T. & R. Annan
THE QUEEN OF THE SWORDS (charcoal study), 1876
By kind permission of the Edinburgh National Gallery.

My Grandparents usually spent their holidays in France and had a good many French friends, Mademoiselle Céleste Léveillé, the Jouanins and the Casellas being the chief of them so far as I remember. Mr. Casella, another business man with a taste for art, lived in London most of his life but always remained French though his daughters were English; he was a man for whose honourable honesty my Father had the greatest admiration and for whose misfortune in losing his money, owing to his unusual sense of honour, he had the greatest sympathy.

My Father particularly liked French people, finding their charming manners and great artistic sense most attractive.

We may now picture Orchardson as well started in his career; not merely a rising man but a risen one. He was made A.R.A. in 1868, the year in which he exhibited “Prince Henry, Poins and Falstaff” and “Mrs. Birket Foster” at the Royal Academy.

To hunting and billiards Orchardson now added a third amusement—tennis, real tennis, which he first saw played at Brighton when there with Mr. Pettie. According to Sir Walter Armstrong, “One day W. Q. O. and Pettie strolled into the court at the back of Bedford Hotel, and taking up a pair of racquets set themselves to solve the mysteries of the game.” Orchardson was elected to the M.C.C. in 1872 and played frequently at Lord’s and sometimes at Prince’s and Queen’s Clubs.

After Kensington, Orchardson tried St. John’s Wood Road, No. 19, where he remained, I think, until his marriage.

In answer to this Orchardson’s father wrote a sympathetic letter, of which this is all that remains:

There is no indication of the nature of this “painful” news, but presumably Orchardson postponed his visit to Venice and went to help his father, to whom he was very devoted.

Arrived in Venice, he took rooms in the Casa Benitzki on the Grand Canal. He had intended to work, but found the light too vivid, so he loitered and made sketches. He hired a gondola and gondolier and went on expeditions. He swam every morning, first throwing in his hat and then diving after it and swimming for an hour with the gondola following. He did not consider himself a good swimmer as he could only swim for one hour and the Venetians could swim two; and no wonder he said—he used to pass a family of father and many children all swimming together at the foot of their house-steps, even including a baby of a year old, who was “thrown” into the water with the other children and seemed to take to swimming as naturally as a little frog.

He chased mosquitoes with a candle round his room at night, but in the end got fever, but that must have been before the connection between malaria and mosquitoes was known. A doctor was called who prescribed medicine; as each bottle arrived the patient threw it out of the window, to which act he humorously ascribed his complete recovery. Probably his habit of taking quinine for tic douloureux had a good deal more to do with it.

A thunderstorm is very beautiful, and my Father told me he enjoyed watching the marvellously vivid lightning in Venice, but his eyes were injured one night by the startling and sudden contrast between vivid light and intense darkness, and his eyes were always delicate afterwards, and he sometimes suffered from a very real though unfounded fear of blindness. “And then,” he used to say, “we shall all starve; you children would starve.”

All the world loves a lover, and Antonio, Orchardson’s gondolier, general factotum and invaluable servant, was a very true one. He was engaged to be married and his betrothed fell ill of small-pox. After a long illness she lay dying, drained of all strength, and Antonio was told that the only chance of saving her was the gift of strong young life. Antonio took her in his arms and pressed her to him for a day and a night, willing her to live. She lived, they were married, and Antonio, beaming with pride and delight, presented his terribly scarred bride to his employer.

After a time “Freddy” Walker, artist and fisherman, wrote that he would join W. Q. O. and would come by sea. Orchardson ordered Antonio to engage a second gondolier for the long journey to Malamocco, the steamer’s stopping place. But Antonio knew better than that for the credit of his employer, and appeared with a decorated double gondola and four gondoliers, dressed in their best. So W. Q. O. went in state to meet his friend, who almost tumbled, in his excited state, from the big ship into the little one. Seizing Orchardson by both hands, and shaking them violently, he exclaimed, “Caught a four-pound trout; caught a four-pound trout!”—his only greeting.

The return journey was accomplished at racing speed, and the gondola was pulled up sharp at the steps of the Casa Benitzki to the great enjoyment of the child-like artists.

“The Harbour of Refuge” grew out of this visit. In one of the little churches of a neighbouring district Orchardson had seen some people sleeping below the pulpit itself during the service. “Here’s a subject for ‘Freddy,’ ” he thought and took him out to see the place, and there were the same people still sleeping in the same place as if they had never wakened. Walker was enthusiastically delighted and thought about the matter for some time, but could not get a setting, though he tried St Mark’s and many other churches; finally he relegated the sleepers to the background and so evolved his most celebrated picture.

Late in the summer the Franco-Prussian war broke out; the English newspapers in Venice were delayed and as he could speak no Italian, he read the Italian papers aloud (thanks to his early training in Scottish Latin) to English speaking, but illiterate, Antonio, who translated, and W. Q. O. was fired with the desire to see something of the war. Then news came that Paris was to be invested and he hastened north to try and get in before the city was entirely closed in; but having reached Strasbourg he found the railways blocked with prisoners’ trains from Sédan. My Father described the spectacle as utterly pitiful; it was pouring with rain and the prisoners were herded together in open cattle trucks, so crowded that there was no room even to sit, much less lie down; without overcoats, some few munching hunks of black bread. And their piteous plight was only equalled by the despairing misery of their exhausted faces. “Not a human expression among them,” he said. He found it impossible to go further north so turned south and finally after much difficulty and delay he got through to Dieppe and so home.

By this time he was very intimate with the Moxons, whose anxieties he shared about their French friends in Paris. When Paris fell, it was known that the people had very literally starved. Our friends had shared the elephants and other animals from the Zoo and were finally reduced to eating rats. At one time they had one skinny chicken left; but the cat ate it, so a family council decided to eat the cat as the only means left of eating the chicken; unfortunately the cat proved even more skinny than the fowl.

The war made a great impression on my Father, for I remember when I was a child that he still spoke of it as being just “the other day,” and was still full of indignation against the Germans, of whom he spoke as the “brutal Saxons.” Indeed, he always inveighed against Saxons as such whether German or English.

Though W. Q. O. did no real work in Venice, yet he produced six pictures of Venetian subjects—until 1875—of these I cannot speak for I have never seen them.

While at St. John’s Wood he had two dogs—“Reveller,” a prize bloodhound he bought at the Crystal Palace Dog Show, and “Oscar,” the Aberdeen terrier given him by his father.

He painted several pictures from these two dogs of which “Reveller” is painted in a much larger brushwork than is usual in his pictures; it seems to suit the dog’s rough hair exactly. The background was Buckingham Gate, which I believe has since been pulled down; it took him a long time to find this background.

Orchardson’s little friend “Chattie” Clow was staying with friends in London in 1870 and spent several afternoons with her old friend Bill.

She writes to me:

Mrs. Ford reminds me of another little tale of this time that my Father used to tell with much enjoyment. One morning, he and Pettie were walking into town, when they saw a man with a cartload of very nice plants. Mr. Pettie bought one or two and told the man to deliver them, giving the address. On their return they found the hall full of plants. Mr Pettie was much surprised and asked his wife why she had been so extravagant.

“Didn’t you send them?” said Mrs Pettie. “The man said I was to take in all the plants and pay for them, and I did.”

Next day all the plants were dead, and on examination they proved to be rootless!

Work, hunting, tennis, billiards and visiting at the Moxons, and then his engagement early in November 1872 to Nelly Moxon, who, I gathered from herself (my Mother), patiently waited till he had finished flirting with other girls. I asked her once if she was never jealous and she answered: “No, why should I be? I got him.” But legend states that the other girls—I mean “young ladies,” this was before the days of girls—with whom he had been flirting constantly, were very vexed. “Little Nellie,” sincere, enthusiastic hero-worshipper, never flirted with anyone, and Orchardson paid her the compliment of never flirting with her. They were simply great friends, a middle-aged man and a young girl, almost a child, so that their engagement caused much surprise, except to my Mother’s two bosom friends, Anna Moxon and Céleste Léveillé.

This present was a big, patterned gold brooch with pearls round and a cairngorm centre, with a pair of earrings to match; I believe they were copied from the Bruce’s plaid-brooch when the Douglas caught the plaid but missed the man. The brooch seems to represent a castle with a central keep and towers all round and a battlemented wall.

Photo T. & R. Annan
THE QUEEN OF THE SWORDS (head study), 1876
By kind permission of James Caw, Esq.

April 8th, 1873—their wedding day—a landmark in these two lives from now on scarcely ever separated! It was a true-love match and they remained true lovers until the end of their lives and beyond, they hoped.

When my Mother spoke of meeting in a future world, my Father only answered, rather sadly I fancy, “It may be.” But my Mother believed so fervently in a future life and meeting that at times she almost believed her beloved dead could hear her living thoughts.

In this mood she wrote some Reminiscences addressed: “Quiller, do you remember?” This little written talk seems to me so simple and sincere an account of the vivid happiness of these early days that I quote some of it with the addition of some punctuation, but otherwise with little alteration, although it was not intended for publication, but only for the biographer’s and her other children’s information.

My Mother was not a clever, brilliant woman, but she possessed the beautiful qualities of sincerity, simplicity, enthusiasm and sympathy; she had, besides, a natural artistic taste which became so highly cultivated by constant association with art that she became a very competent critic, whose judgment was much valued by her husband—although she never learnt art-jargon.

My Father told me he sought to cheer his young wife by making fun of the adventure for he saw that she had been badly frightened, but at the end of three days he found that, although she had spoken, she remembered nothing at all from the time of the averted accident. When I asked him what a precipice looked like when one was falling down it he said that the vast depth was a most wonderful and awe-inspiring sight and that he had enjoyed the adventure until he found that my Mother was ill. She recovered quickly, but I think she really always felt the effects of it, and for long years my Father felt the horror of his bride’s three days of lost memory.

They settled down at Hyndford House, 239 Brompton Road, a quaint old house now pulled down. My Mother described it as having a picturesque hall with a pillar in the middle of it; and a room on the left where there was a wonderful old oak dresser which they gradually covered with beautiful blue china; they had to leave the dresser behind them when they moved, but the “old blue” went with them in all their movings. A little garden in the front with a covered alley leading to the front door, and a mulberry tree and a fountain in the back garden completed my Mother’s description, but we may suppose there were other rooms. There was no studio, unfortunately, so W. Q. O. had one at the Kineston Street Studios (now 6 William Street), and every day husband and wife walked there together.

Photo T. & R. Annan
THE QUEEN OF THE SWORDS, 1877
By kind permission of Mrs. R. W. Paterson (owner) and the Fine Art Society.

“Happy, happy days, do you remember?” exclaims my Mother. In the evenings when not dining with friends or giving a dinner-party they dined, often two or three times a week, at a restaurant usually in the South Kensington Museum where after dinner they studied antique furniture, old china and treasures of all sorts whereby they both became experts.

The Kineston Street Studio having been rendered useless, Orchardson built one for himself over the Hyndford House stables—of this I have no description whatsoever—and he worked here for about three years. He painted and exhibited three or four pictures and portraits every year, but nothing of great importance. Indeed, they seem to me rather in the nature of practice studies while he was learning a new phase of life and laying in a store of knowledge amongst the art treasures in the neighbouring museum.

The portrait of his wife (in black), for instance: he told me he had been having an argument with someone about the painting of life-sized heads; he maintained that it was as easy as, anyway, no more difficult than, small heads, and the other man said it was much more difficult. So, on reaching home my Father asked his wife to get on the throne, and there and then he began her portrait; “and it was no more difficult than small heads—simply a matter of seeing.”

In spite of this feeling of an interregnum the portrait of my Grandfather, C. Moxon, is one of his very finest. “Oscar and Brin,” “Reveller” and several other pictures of this time record W. Q. O.’s love for dogs. Of all the dogs he ever had Oscar was chief favourite, alike for his wisdom, his courage and his canine beauty—an Aberdeen terrier without even a pedigree. As an instance of dog courage and long memory, my Father used to tell how Oscar as a tiny puppy was nearly shaken to death by a spotted coach-dog; ever after Oscar attacked all spotted coach-dogs, no doubt in hopes of ultimately killing the right one.

Reveller was a young bloodhound, a prize winner at the Crystal Palace Dog Show, where my Father bought him. He took the dog home and on the road they had a difference of opinion; my Father broke his cane over the dog’s back and thereafter was master. On reaching home he handed Reveller over to the care of Tuke, a model who did many odd jobs about the studio and house, to be taken to the stables. Tuke, a great hulking fellow once a sailor, eyed the savage-looking bloodhound very doubtfully as he took hold of the chain, so the dog growled and refused to move until my Father said “Go.” Some time later there arose a fearful noise of dog fighting, and my Father and Mother rushed out to see what was the matter. They arrived just in time to rescue Oscar from the jaws of death—Reveller’s jaws. My Father choked off Reveller and my Mother got hold of Oscar, but he wriggled so violently that she had to let go, when Oscar immediately attacked Reveller again with the utmost fury. The fight was at last stopped and the dogs chained up. My Father then turned for explanations to Tuke and the groom who had been looking on. Oscar, it seemed, tried to walk off with Reveller’s bone, Reveller objected, and the little dog had flown at the big dog’s throat, pandemonium ensued, and the two men had been too much afraid to interfere. Reveller gave up his bones to Oscar ever after and they became great friends—always on the understanding that Oscar was master.

About this time there were two dog stealers, father and son. They were ostensibly dog fanciers, and though well known and greatly suspected, nothing had so far been brought home to them. Their premises were always open to inspection by the police or any one else who chose to go round. I say round advisedly, for their kennels were built in a circle, so that when you went in searching for your dog you were taken round the circle as many times as you liked. The dog you were looking for was also taken round the circle on the other side; but this was not known till later.

One day Reveller disappeared, and my Father went at once to their premises and was taken round the kennels, shown everything most openly, but of course he never suspected the ruse employed any more than the police did.

After a week or so my Father chanced to meet Mr. Briton Rivière, who asked immediately:

“You don’t happen to have lost your dog, do you?”

“Well, as it happens, I do,” answered my Father.

“In that case,” said Mr. Rivière, “I can put you on to him,” and proceeded to explain that being in need of a bloodhound for a model, he had sent to X.’s. Young X. had at once brought a beautiful young dog, and in drawing it Mr Rivière discovered that he was quite familiar with the lines of it, then suddenly remembered Orchardson’s bloodhound; hence the enquiry on meeting. The next day my Father went to Mr Rivière’s house to catch “Young” X. on leaving; unfortunately, he was just too late, and saw Young X. and the dog disappearing round a corner. The coachman—my Father had borrowed his father-in-law’s brougham for the occasion—whipped up the horse and they dashed off in pursuit. X. dodged round every corner in true dog-stealer fashion, the brougham dodged after him corner after corner, till at last my Father, judging he was near enough, jumped out, ran down a short cut, and confronted X. at his next corner. Said my Father, as the dog stood on its hind legs and put its paws on his shoulders, whining: “That is my dog, kindly hand him over.”

Young X. was truculent. “Your dog, indeed, he’s mine—I bought him.”

“A case of disputed property,” said a policeman, coming up at that moment.

“Nonsense,” said my Father, “he’s mine; lead us to the police station.”

Young X. demurred, but had to agree; the brougham followed with my Mother.

“Give the gentleman his dog,” said the police superintendent on hearing the events.

Young X. still objected, so my Father said: “The dog is mine and Young X. knows that very well. I can easily prove it if you will allow me. You will agree that a dog will go to his master when called?” The Superintendent nodded. “In that case let X. call, and I will call, and whoever the dog follows shall be deemed his master.”

The Superintendent agreed. The dog’s chain was loosed. X. called violently, “Come ’ere, you brute!” My Father walked to the door saying quietly, “Come, Reveller.” With a bound the dog was past him, into the brougham, crouching and quivering with delight at my Mother’s feet.

X. sent W. Q. O. an account for Reveller’s keep for six weeks, quite forgetting that he had denied having the dog at all; the bill was sent in to disguise the theft of course, and equally of course was not paid.

Reveller’s end was poison; he was found lying dead beside some poisoned meat in the garden just at the dividing wall. What brutes some people are!

The first child—Charlie—was born prematurely on Christmas Eve 1873 to the danger of both mother and son. “What an event! do you remember?” exclaims my Mother, and goes on:

“Do you remember? You had for years spent Christmas with the Birket Fosters’ at Witley; they asked you again although you were married and I unable to go. You did go for a week some time after Christmas, which distressed me; as I was alone.”

The baby managed to survive in spite of spartan father and anxious mother. My Father always maintained that he had saved the lives and stomachs of all his children by refusing to allow them to have any medicine whatever. He was inclined to be prejudiced against doctors, and asserted that their prescriptions were mostly experimental; some few doctors entirely agreed with him. For surgeons he had the greatest admiration, but, like most other people, thought they were inclined to operate unnecessarily at times. When speaking of doctors he often laughingly used to quote his mother-in-law: “The doctors may think what they like but I know better.” My “Grannie” was a devoted wife but never could understand her husband’s jokes nor why he was so fond of making them. And now here was her son-in-law doing the same thing; indeed it was very trying, but then Quiller was a Scotchman, so what else could you expect? “Nasty mean things, Scotchmen.” And she never could understand why her son-in-law, whom she really loved and admired, often greeted her remarks with roars of laughter.

My Father was fond of telling a droll little tale against his wife and mother-in-law. Before his marriage he kept his costumes on the studio floor, and when in need of one of them, merely turned over the heap with a stick until he chanced upon the right thing. Now, with a wife determined to belie her title of “baby-wife,” he must needs hunt in many drawers. But he had the laugh against her one day when her mother came to see them shortly after their return from their honeymoon. The mother-in-law was taken to the bedroom to be shown some alterations, and there upon the bed was her daughter’s jacket, on a chair her hat, one shoe here, its fellow far away. My tidy Grandmother was speechless; then, shaking her head and wringing her hands, she turned to her laughing son-in-law with the utmost sympathy and commiseration: “Quiller! . . . dear me! dear me! how very vexed I am! . . . and to think it was my upbringing!”

My father gained a reputation for open-hearted and open-handed hospitality, to relations in particular—a very just reputation; he was most generous, but it led to imposition.

One evening at Hyndford House a stranger presented himself and said he was a long-lost cousin newly arrived from Australia; my Father, whose family was given to wandering, received him with open arms, invited him to dinner which he “unfortunately could not accept,” and made much of him in the pleasant way he had.

On leaving, the stranger asked the loan of half a crown, having forgotten his purse; it was readily given him with an invitation to return, and he went off, Orchardson remarking as he did so, “How like his walk is to my Father’s.”

The following day my Father happening to meet Pettie in the street, told him of his new relation. Said Pettie, “How strange! a long-lost cousin came to me only the night before.”

Meeting with Tom Graham a little further along, they told him the curious coincidence.

“Indeed,” said he, “long-lost cousins must be plentiful for I had one, too.”

A third long-lost relation seemed suspicious, so the three friends compared notes and found it was the same man! He must have been a skilful rogue, for in each case he gave a plausible story; he had obtained ten shillings from Mr Graham, a whole pound from Mr Pettie, but only the half-crown from my Father—possibly the extreme kindness of his reception made him a little ashamed to ask for more.

For many years my Father was constantly worried by begging letter-writers and dinner-time beggars, and always gave something on the principle of giving “the poor beggar the benefit of the doubt.” But at last he was persuaded that he was being imposed upon and refused to give; almost immediately the beggars ceased coming.

Both my Father’s and my Mother’s charity and generosity were deep and wide almost beyond their means; but the world knew nothing of it.

My Father continued to hunt and once my Mother went riding over the Downs with him, but the steepness of the hills renewed her Splügen fright and she never rode again except once at Westgate, where she finally decided to give it up altogether, and persuaded my Father that hunting was an unsuitable pastime for a married man with a family. She had once seen his horse come down with him at a ha-ha; he told me that before getting out of the way of his horse’s kicking heels, he had an excellent opportunity to observe the remarkable size of a horse’s head—much bigger than he had supposed. He also said that he thought his neck was saved on that occasion by the concertina behaviour of his top hat, which he thereafter considered the most suitable type of hat for riding.

My Mother evidently took to writing to her father-in-law, whom she never saw; here are some extracts that give a little glimpse of Orchardson’s domestic life:

Photo T. & R. Annan
CONDITIONAL NEUTRALITY (Charles M. Q. Orchardson), 1878
By kind permission of T. R. Cowie, Esq.

[And thereafter, as Orchardson was fond of telling, drank his Father’s and Mother’s healths every day, clinking glasses with them and saying “Your very good health”; after which he would go to the foot of the stairs and call, “Nursie, come and fetch Master Charlie.”]

Mrs Ford (“Chattie”) writes to me: “My Mother had asked Mr Orchardson, sen., to come and stay with us for a few days; as we did not hear from him my Mother and I went to see him, and were much shocked to find he had died the day before. Your Father was there in great distress, and I recollect him saying: ‘I have had worries, but never before a great grief.’ He was very much attached to his father and his father was proud of and devoted to him.”

In 1875, the present humble biographer was born with a minimum of the pomp necessary to the circumstance—the second baby and only a girl. Then a happy party went to Brighton in September to recruit, the Father and Mother, Grandfather and Grandmother, two babies and two nurses. Apparently they all sat on the beach throwing pebbles into the sea, the more expert making ducks and drakes. Strange to relate I remember nothing of this, but I have a funny old “beach” photograph of them, us all sitting on the sands in a row and, to modern eyes, looking extraordinarily old; yet my Mother was only twenty-two.

Very likely Orchardson played tennis in the intervals of stone-throwing.

On Christmas Eve 1876, another child, a daughter, was born at Hyndford House, and by March 1877 it was time to have a change. So Orchardson, no longer, as he said, “in a position of greater freedom and less responsibility,” moved with his wife and family to E. M. Ward’s old house with two studios, No. 1 Landsdown Road, opposite the Peter Graham’s with whom we had much friendly intercourse.

My Mother never liked this house; it was dark and gloomy, a mouse ran over her pillow one night, and a picture fell down in the studio another night, causing my Mother to arm her smiling husband with a sword, herself with a poker, to go in chase of imaginary burglars. So she had a superstitious feeling that the house was unlucky; my Father smiled indulgently at his young wife’s fancies, and they neither of them thought of the simple remedies of white paint, a mousetrap and some new picture wire.

There was a beautiful pear tree in the garden specially pointed out to me by my Father for its fine shape, and a semicircular drive in front, round which my Father used to give his small son rides on Birdlime, a favourite mare. He used to drive her to Witley from Hyndford House, a distance of thirty miles, the last two uphill, and she never turned a hair in spite of the great pace she travelled at.

In 1876 they spent a holiday at Westgate-on-Sea, in Adrian Square, where they finally decided that it was unwise to take small children to lodgings. My Grandfather decided at the same time that he had acquired sufficient property for his unambitious needs and might now retire and spend the evening of his days (he was only sixty years old) at his favourite occupation of painting. He thereupon built twin houses on the sea-front of that rising resort, which afterwards ceased to rise owing to an outbreak of diphtheria caused by a penny wise and pound foolish policy of drainage; one house for himself, wife and son, the other for his daughter, his son being the architect.

Both the houses were altered afterwards, and as I remember them they were not at all alike, for one thing ours had to be suited to the needs of a growing family. Then the gardens were very different; ours contained the studio—a trellis-covered corrugated iron building—and the open tennis court, modelled on “Lord’s,” was built—the only one in England, I believe. I was a very small girl at the time, but to this day I remember a little incident of my Father’s understanding sympathy. Between the studio and the tennis court, the pent-house covered a brick-paved way leading to the garden gate, which opened on to our favourite daisy-chain field. I have no doubt it was quite an ordinary path or passageway, but going through one windy day, a horrid clanging, a sound of gongs beaten by ghosts terrified me, and thereafter I could only go through that passage at full speed and with my heart in my mouth. One afternoon my Father invited me to go with him to the studio—a sacred spot full of wonderful treasures. With my hand in my Father’s I felt safe, and we were nearly through the dreadful passage when the clanging started. I would not tell my fear, but my Father felt my quivering hand, and in his gentle sympathetic way asked what was troubling me. I whispered, “It’s a ghost banging.” He did not laugh or scold, but carefully explained the cause of the noise: a bit of loose iron left hanging on a pole, which I could see quite well when he pointed it out; so my fears were soothed until I was alone, when the ghosts returned. My Father found this out and had the piece of iron removed.

Later on the daisy field was taken into the garden, and the studio removed to the end of it. Trellis-work covered the iron, and that in turn was soon covered with roses, so that with the white-pillared doorway and red roof it was quite picturesque. Inside it was lined with brown wood; one corner—it was square—was partitioned off to serve as a lumber room, and a dressing-room for models; the big recess made by this oblong was the billiard room, with a raised platform round three sides with seats for the onlookers. With his usual friendliness my Father early taught us to mark. One visitor rather fussed at being marked up by a child, and my Father earned my adoration more than ever by saying that it was “all right,” and I should make no mistake.

The only decoration I remember was a wonderful green Chinese Dragon, that lived on the top of the lumber-room; the studio end is shrouded in mist, except for the great north window, and two events which occupied my Father and Mother and many helpers for days—a Christmas tree and a dance. My Father was the leading spirit in the revels as well as in the preparations, and he had an able second in his less lively but equally cheerful and hospitable wife. There were several “grown-up” dances held in the studio, I believe, but I only remember one other big mixed grown-up and children’s party; the entertainment consisted of dancing and of an extremely clever young conjurer of nineteen years, just beginning his career, a painter’s son since known to fame as David Devant of Maskelyne and Devant.

Dinner parties were frequent, for which, of course, I was ineligible, but my brother Charlie and I used to creep out of bed to the head of the stairs for the express purpose of listening to our Father’s laughter ringing out above everyone else’s. Once, when Mr Pettie was a guest, we decided he was a good second, but no one else even approached our Father’s for gaiety and spontaneity—it made one laugh merely to hear him.

After the garden was enlarged there was sufficient space for occasional archery, the fashionable amusement at that time, but my Mother never cared for games and my Father preferred tennis, which he played nearly every day. Our tennis visitors were many and included amongst others, the late Lord Forester—then Mr Forester, and his sons, Mr (afterwards Sir Norman) Lockyer, the astronomer; Mr Linley Sambourne of Punch; the amateur tennis champion, Mr Heathcote; Mr (afterwards Sir Walter) Armstrong, and Mr Julian Marshall, who wrote a history of tennis. My Father was determined to play well and had Lambert, the professional champion, down to stay. Of course, Mr Pettie (a tennis player) came often with his wife, besides the MacWhirters and many other old friends who did not play.

Mrs Forester was in the habit of coming to tea and then walking home with her husband after the game was finished. One day she came as usual, and after chatting to my Mother for a while, sent a message to her husband that she was rather in a hurry and would he be long? He sent a reply that he was coming directly. After a while she sent another message and received the same reply. She waited patiently and by and by sent again, and again received the same answer. But at the end of two hours, having sent the same message and received the same answer several times, she went home alone. By and by, Mr Forester leisurely appeared and slowly inquired of my Mother where his wife was. On hearing that she had waited for two hours and had been gone for nearly an hour, he exclaimed in his slow kind voice: “Indeed! I am very sorry, very sorry; but then, my wife is always so precipitate.”

My Father admired Sambourne’s drawings and delighted in his appearance as “got up” for tennis—a white flannel suit edged with sky blue and a French tam o’shanter to match; as he was very short and very fat, the effect, as my Father said, was “killing.” He lived near Ramsgate and usually rode over on his horse “Punch,” very often along the sea-shore; he had what my Father called a “wash ball” seat. One day he arrived draggled and dripping from head to foot; having been provided with dry clothing, he explained that he was in the habit of riding Punch in the sea, but that Punch objected to going beyond a certain depth and always turned shorewards very suddenly at his own time, invariably turning to the right.

“Now,” said Mr Sambourne, “if only he would turn to the left it wouldn’t matter as I don’t fall off that side.” Turning to my Father he added: “Tell me, Orchardson, which side do you fall off?”

I can almost hear my Nimrod Father laughing even now.

Another Punch man my Father knew was Charles Keene, besides du Maurier, Tenniel and others, and it was he who supplied Keene with the original of his famous “Bang went saxpence,” story. My Father did not approve of Keene’s rendering and said a Scotchman would not express himself that way and that the original “Yince change a saxpence and it gangs like stour,”^[1] was in character and to be preferred.

“Keene spoilt that story trying to make it suitable to the Southron unintelligent sense of humour,” said my Father.

Mr Weigall, the amateur painter, also came over frequently from near Ramsgate; besides playing tennis he painted Orchardson’s portrait sometime or other, which was very like, but had no great merit as a work of art; I fancy the portrait was a wedding present.

Julian Marshall became a tennis friend in very simple fashion; he heard of the tennis court at Ivyside and wrote for permission to come and see it and, if possible, play on it in order to incorporate a description of it and its rooflessness in his forthcoming book.

Of course, he was invited, and after that he came often, bringing a friend, Mr Spencer Gore and his banjo with him. The day was spent in the tennis court, and the evenings were devoted to billiards and comic songs from Mr Gore. Dinner was at 7, to allow “the children” (Charlie and me) to come in as always—such kindly parents we had—and we were also allowed to come and hear the banjo.

How we all laughed at those silly songs, “Emma and the buns,” and I don’t know what else; my Father laughed till the tears ran down his face, and laughed and laughed. But those were laughing days, starting at breakfast, visitors or no visitors. “Happy days! happy days!” exclaims my Mother in her memories of them.

Mr. Marshall must have been a clumsy person, for he was always breaking things; windows with wild tennis balls, bedroom crockery, vases, anything breakable in fact. His letters of apology are funny. I subjoin one.

Mr Lockyer (now Sir Norman) lived almost next door and was a frequent visitor and tennis player, but though he was a celebrated man, I remember nothing of him except that he teased little girls and wore a perfectly disgraceful straw hat; when I grew up, however, I found he was a very witty talker.

The Edinburgh Moxons visited their uncle, my Grandfather, but as the houses were next door and communication constant, visitors were almost interchangeable. One of the cousins was an amateur painter; another an amateur gourmet—perhaps gourmand would be more correct. He was a great connoisseur of claret, boasted of his palate, and, “of course,” would not look at “Gilbey’s.” So one day, when he was lunching with us, my Father, in a spirit of mischief, drew him out on the subject of the wine he was drinking with much gusto. He mouthed it, held it up to the light, showing every sign of the greatest appreciation, descanting at the same time on the impossibility of drinking bad claret, especially Gilbey’s. My Father laughed heartily whenever he told the tale and wound up by saying: “But I never told him it was Gilbey’s one-and-sixpenny that he was enjoying so much—that would have been too cruel.”

The Spanish cousins who visited us at Westgate, were Orchardsons who had settled in Spain, on the recommendation, I suppose, of the Spanish Quiller. One of them came over to England and was a great hunting companion of my Father’s; he was called Cousin by all and sundry, strangers adding a polite Mr to the word, supposing it to be his name.

I remember two other foreign visitors, one my Mother’s greatest friend, Mlle Céleste Léveillé, and the other, an American artist who came for the express purpose of painting Orchardson’s portrait. My Father, always an unwilling sitter, consented, chiefly, I think, in compliment to another nation. When it was nearly finished, Mr. X went away and the portrait, half an inch thick or more with paint, was sent to the toolshed to dry. There my brother and I came across it one day when we were playing; we looked, gave one shriek of terror and fled, sobbing. Some time later my Father was wondering what to do with the thing—it could not be called a portrait—and I begged him to burn it that no one else might be so frightened again; he acceded to my request and the dreadful nightmare thing was burnt in the garden bonfire. We heard afterwards that Mr. X had been shut up in a madhouse.

Perhaps the most frequent of our tennis visitors was a near-by neighbour, Lieutenant-Colonel Jones, a Crimean veteran of twenty-seven wounds. His daughter, Katie, was my constant playmate, and as the sweetness of her disposition equalled the charming prettiness of her face, she was always a great favourite with my Father. Indeed, had he not been really nice he might have been jealous for his own daughter, whom he nicknamed the Seal when he saw her swimming, from her seal-like hair and eyes. Fortunately for my amour propre he did not address me as my brother did, by the name of a chimpanzee in the Margate Zoo, remarkable chiefly for big brown eyes and a most violent temper, though he could not help laughing and agreeing when Charlie called his attention to the resemblance. He said of this eldest and liveliest son that “his internal spirits were always cutting capers!”

My Father took as much interest in the decoration of the house as of the studio and garden. He designed the dining-room chairs himself. They were very simple, even severe, but most comfortable, were made of walnut wood and upholstered in dull green Utrecht velvet; the walls were hung with cloth in panels to match, except the fireplace recess which was lined with Dutch tiles, blue figures on a white ground. Of course, there were pictures and portraits in the panels.

The drawing-room was long and narrow, white and gold and green. One end was entirely furnished with Louis Quatorze furniture, all used, or to be used, in pictures; the other end was more varied in period and, I think, contained “Madame Récamier’s” sofa, but it was not until later that W. Q. O. bought much Empire furniture.

The rest of the house was chiefly my Mother’s concern, except the Loggia, the mosaic floor of which was laid by Italian workmen, whose industry caused my Father to make very severe comparisons between them and the ordinary British workman; besides, the Italians pleased his artistic eye. He always inveighed against the lack of artistic appearance, feeling and imagination in the average English man and woman; he was lively and quick-witted himself, so thought English people dull and slow “i’ the uptak.” But he had an unbounded admiration for Scotland and her people; they might be dour, but at least they would never muddle and fumble towards their ends in the English fashion; they might be careful, but they were never mean—on the contrary, they were the most generous people in the world; their sense of humour was deep, not frivolous like the English; finally, even the peasantry had been highly educated for centuries, and their kindly language had both verve and élan. On being asked why, if Scotchmen were so superior, they always came to England, he would answer: “To show their superiority.”

“And why do they marry English wives?”

“To prove their wisdom,” he would answer with a courtly bow to his English wife.

I once pressed for a more serious answer and he said he thought Scotchwomen were harder than English and less gentle in their manners, that they had very fine and beautiful qualities, but kept them too deep—buried under a rather rough exterior.

In May 1877 the “Queen of the Swords” was exhibited and the cleverest Associate could no longer be ignored.

Judging from the many letters of congratulation he received, the general consensus of opinion was that the honour had been far too long delayed—or as Punch put it [about someone else, I think], it was time he was R.A.’d in the full panoply of the R.A.—and that in honouring Orchardson the Royal Academy had honoured itself.

THE SOCIAL EDDY, 1878
By kind permission of the Aberdeen Art Gallery.

Orchardson seldom worked long hours, but the sureness and concentrated intentness with which he painted made him a very quick worker. The only time he varied the short hours was when he would discover that he was late for the R.A. and had some picture on hand that he specially wished to send; then he would breakfast at sunrise and work till sunset with scarcely a pause. On very rare occasions he would work far into the night, but he did not like artificial light. He once, when he was a student, painted an arm by lamplight, and next day found he had painted it yellow. “Madame Récamier,” for instance, was finished at 11 p.m., while the collecting van was waiting; the well-tipped driver cleverly managed to nip in at the Academy gates just as they were closing; strange to relate, the wet paint was not smudged, though the banisters were broken getting the picture down the stairs.

At Westgate my Father went to the studio after breakfast, for which he was always late, and worked till luncheon time; the rest of the day he played tennis and dawdled up and down the garden thinking deeply—“seeing visions.” Often he would take his eldest son and daughter for a walk in the evening along the unfrequented cliffs towards Epple Bay, to watch the sunsets, successors of Turner’s magic unbelievable skies.^[3]

Every evening a shimmering path of golden glory led across the sea to heaven’s own gate it seemed; my heart stood still for the wonder of it and my Father would murmur some reverent word of love for the Creator.

Orchardson was a deeply religious man with an intense appreciation for the wonders of creation, but he only went to church twice that I can remember, and that was to please other people; he said he preferred God’s own church not built with hands. Also, he did not like being preached at by a young and probably ignorant man, and not be able to argue and show him where he was wrong! My Father was very Scotch in his enjoyment of and capacity for argument, as my Grannie said indignantly: “He always makes his case good.”

His love of and interest in Nature were very great, and often during our walks he would pluck a flower or pick up a shell, and point out the wonder of the form and colour. Or, again, some beauty of sea or sky or chalk cliff would cause him to grow eloquent in praise of God’s creation.

According to his critical but friendly mother-in-law, “Quiller” was completely spoilt by his wife. It is a fact that she always gave in to him apparently, and when she took her own way, I doubt if he was aware that it had not been originally his, so quiet was her method. And on the rare occasions that he consciously gave in, it was with the manner of a sultan conferring favours. She managed her household in such a manner that she could read to him at almost any time he wished, and practically always while he was working. In the early part of the evening she, my eldest brother and I, took it in turn at this time to read aloud some book we could all enjoy—Scott or Stevenson, for instance; my Father, especially, did not appreciate my reading—I got so excited that I sometimes unconsciously subsided into silence and read to myself until suddenly roused with, “Well, what’s the matter?” from my Father; an indignant “Get on,” from my brother, and my Mother’s quiet laugh. Later in the evening my parents returned to their own books, usually something to do with the period of the picture in hand.

While my Mother was reading, my Father generally held a newspaper in his hand as a screen for his eyes against the fire. One day, chancing to look up, she observed him reading to himself; enquiry led to the admission that this was by no means the first time he had been guilty. His wife was very indignant; what was the use of her reading aloud to save his eyes if he read to himself at the same time? And besides, he could not possibly follow the two trains of thought. The artist admitted he was foolish not to save his eyes, but protested he knew the whole of the two readings and proved it by giving a complete summary of both. The story went a friendly round and Tom Graham explained it:

“Well, you see, Orchardson always had two heads on his shoulders.”

My father loved the country, but I think he found London better for work; at any rate he seldom finished a picture at Westgate, but about a month before sending-in day at the Royal Academy he and my Mother would go to No. 1 Spenser Street, which they took after leaving Landsdown Road, with whatever pictures the artist might intend to finish. Sometimes they took a child with them, more often not, and we were left in charge of an excellent nurse (with our grandparents next door) who petted us, played with us, and kept us in very good order. She remained with us for fifteen years and then became a hospital nurse, my Father paying for her training besides giving her a small pension; it was she who helped my Mother to nurse my Father during his many illnesses at the end of his life, and she was with him at the last.

On first going to Westgate my parents had the unhappiness to lose a baby daughter very suddenly. W. Q. O. wrote to several intimate friends announcing the child’s death, my Mother being too unhappy to write, but I cannot trace his letters after all these years. My Mother’s grief was so intense that it overshadowed her life, and consequently her husband’s, for a very long time. I associate her with a black dress for many early years and remember quite well her first coloured one, a kind of bronze, shot brown and green, and see her now as she came in at the drawing-room door at Ivyside rather shyly, I think, to be greeted by, “Oh, Mumsie, why haven’t you got on your black dress?” How cruel children are! I was about six at the time, so my Father must have exercised much patience and tenderness before his wife recovered from the shock even partially.

This sorrow made her dislike Westgate, and she was always glad to get back to dear, dirty, smoky, smelly London.

She maintained, quite seriously, and my Father laughingly agreed, that every town she had ever been in had its own particular smell: Venice, for instance, Edinburgh, Paris, but the smell of London was unique and to be reckoned as a perfume. Which perhaps was the reason she helped her husband to choose Spenser Street, for there the concentrated essence of London perfume dwelt in perfection.

It was a one-house street, No. 1 and no other, a turning off Victoria Street; and it was a topsy-turvy house, the bedrooms being on the ground floor, the dining-room and drawing-room (separated by pillars only) on the first floor, kitchen and studio on the top floor.

Here the artist and his wife tasted the best fruits of fame. They were utterly happy in their married life, and loved nothing so much as being together; at the same time, it was natural they should enjoy being made much of. They were young, and their happiness was infectious; my Father was handsome, charming, debonair, witty; my Mother simple, sympathetic and sincere—what wonder they were much sought after?

Babies and a very few children’s illnesses were the only interruptions to this happy life of work and pleasure.

[To E.O. at Ivyside P.M. Nov. 15th, 1882. W. Q. O. at the Petties.]

In 1883 Charlie had scarlet fever and the family was divided up, my Mother at Ivyside with Charlie and his nurses, my Father in London, the rest of the children went to our grandparents.

My Father and Mother wrote to each other twice daily—at least she wrote twice; here are a few of my Father’s letters, none dated, but all about November 1883; they are not thought-out literature, but just hurried scrawls straight from a most loving heart. To me the endings are almost worth all the rest; but those who do not understand letters are advised to skip them, both letters and endings.

[At “moreover” the handwriting suddenly becomes jerky.]

Photo Watt & Son
THE CONNOISSEUR, 1879
By kind permission of the James Orchar Art Gallery.

My parents now resumed their happy life together, to their great content, sometimes at Westgate, most often at Spenser Street. My Father worked in the morning and frequently played tennis in the afternoon, at Lord’s, at Prince’s, and sometimes Queen’s Club; my Mother read aloud while he was working and at any other time when they had nothing else to do in particular. She read tirelessly and well, though in a curiously expressionless way, which my Father liked very much, he said it allowed him to put in the expression for himself, and to be his own interpreter of the author’s meaning.

My Mother had been taught elocution by Mrs Dallas—Miss Glynn, the actress—with whom she remained friends after the lessons were finished with.

In August 1883 Mrs Dallas wrote to W. Q. O. telling him that she was opening a new school of dramatic teaching, and hoped to make it quite a National School of Dramatic Art and highest literature—clerical too. “My programme already represents the Church, the Stage, Literature and Art—so your name, you see, I wish too.”

W. Q. O. wrote in answer [unsigned draft of letter]:

When there were no babies in the way they often went to the theatre, of which both were very fond, dining first at a restaurant and then going to the chosen theatre on the chance of getting a couple of returned stalls, in which they were generally successful, and winding up with a lobster supper. They usually went à deux but occasionally à quatre, amongst their favourite companions for this form of amusement being Mr and Mrs Winchester Clowes; beautiful Mrs Clowes, as lovely in character as in face, being as much loved by my Mother as admired by my Father.

One evening, returning from such an expedition, they were met by an agitated cook-housekeeper—Mr and Mrs MacWhirter had arrived at dinner time. My Father and my Mother looked at each other—no need to continue the tale; they had completely forgotten the engagement till this reminder. They were so entirely sorry and ashamed of their delinquency that such good old friends as the MacWhirters found no difficulty in forgiving them.

Another evening they arrived very late for dinner at the Percy Macquoids. My Father apologized in his usual charming and disarming manner saying that somehow they had accepted two invitations for the same night, “of course, that was my wife’s fault. I take no responsibility for such things—and we had to call round at the other house to explain matters and say we preferred coming here.”

The Macquoids were much flattered, but I wonder what W. Q. O. really said to the other people?

An undated letter from Sir Norman Lockyer illustrates the same little habit:

The absent-minded pair often went out to dinner on the wrong night; but my Father would take no blame—he considered that such domestic matters as dates were entirely his wife’s concern. On the rare occasions that he expressed an opinion on a date, matters were made worse, because then there were two wrong notions instead of one! Later in life they became, after a hard struggle, slightly more methodical, but once absent-minded, always absent-minded.

Another form of absent-mindedness which caused them a good deal of trouble at different times was their habit of forgetting all about money affairs until a polite note from the bank informed W. Q. O. that his account was overdrawn. But once the Westgate bank wrote to him after many years that he still had money there from the time he left Westgate. The needs of a growing family taught my Mother a certain amount of economy; not so my Father, who never knew he was not a rich man. He always felt that if ever he wanted money, he had merely to paint a picture; it did not occur to him that some day he might be old and unable to work hard or even at all.

His only notion of saving is illustrated by the following letter to his wife, undated but probably about 1882 or 1883.

When he grew old and ill my Mother managed all the business affairs, and to her lasting honour be it told, never allowed her husband to suspect even that she would be very poor at his death; so great was her desire that his last days should be full of peace and happiness.

They were great diners-out until W. Q. O. grew delicate—if only a phonograph had been available in those days to record the witty talk!

They often dined at the Seymour Trowers; Mr Trower was a tennis player and so rabid a Socialist that political talk was barred at his table; but he was afterwards secretary to the Navy League, I believe. One night when W. S. Gilbert and his wife were present, conversation took a domestic turn and butchers were discussed. Mrs Gilbert mentioned a memorable joint and said, “I had it cut off myself.” Mr Gilbert, being in a lively witty mood, immediately remarked, “No wonder it was so tender!” amidst the laughter of all the table. Mrs Gilbert apparently did not at once see the joke—she was very pretty, by the way.

But Gilbert was not always amiable. At a dinner at Hyndford House, he and William Black started an argument as to whether Thackeray or Dickens were the greater man, Gilbert being, I believe, in favour of Thackeray and Black voting for Dickens. The argument went on and on, my Father trying to keep the peace; the ladies left, and still the argument went on; it came upstairs to the drawing-room, and finally the two men quarrelled outright and left the house unreconciled. They quite spoilt the evening, and my Father was very angry at this breach of good manners. Black, by the way, appears to have been rather a dull conversationalist, and my Father humorously explained it by saying that, of course, authors always kept their “good things” for their books.

Show Sunday—the Sunday before sending-in day at the R.A.—is quite an institution amongst artists. On it they entertain their friends and the pictures are on view. Some artists admit strangers, but my people never did; some, too, remain to act as hosts but my Father fled. On rare occasions he would remain half an hour or so to see some special person, but as a rule he disappeared after luncheon. The following letter seems to indicate (politely) that on one occasion at least he fled as far as Westgate to his father-in-law.

W. Q. O. went to many public and semi-public banquets which he enjoyed very much except when he had to make a set speech. My Mother’s diary for 1883 gives a little account of one banquet:

HARD HIT, 1879
By kind permission of Messrs. Scott & Fowles, New York.

My Mother kept that flower till she died, then left it to me; I have it now, faded and falling to pieces, but its faint fragrance still tells of their most beautiful love.

In her diary my Mother writes in her simple way: “I am neither beautiful nor clever, and lots of people think Quiller married me for my money—luckily I hadn’t any. . . . How he loves me!”

Of all the banquets Orchardson attended I think the Academy banquet was the one he enjoyed most, partly, perhaps, from a sense of being a host. Some extracts from my Mother’s diary of 1883 or 1884 (she has muddled them) may be of interest:

[A. S. must have said something very unfair about Pettie to make the peaceable Orchardson so very angry.]

“Penny Boating” seems to have been rather a favourite amusement at this time.

My grandparents started an old servant of thirty years’ service in a boarding house in London and always stayed there, where, of course, they were very well and even affectionately cared for.

After sending in the pictures to the Academy my parents usually went to France, Paris only as a rule, but occasionally further afield. They took me with them two or three times later on, but it is rather boring being number three of a honeymoon party; I found my Father and Mother more entertaining when they were separate than when they were together. Not that they were in anyway neglectful or careless, au contraire they were attentive and charming, but I could feel in every sensitive quivering nerve, could “sense,” that I was de trop, and that they would be happier alone.

My Mother’s diary gives a little account of a tour they made in 1886:

[Mlle Céleste Léveillé was headmistress of the Ecole Normal at Nîmes at this time.]

[W. Q. O. was much impressed by the deep feeling shown by these French girls and by the beautiful scene; for a long time he meditated a picture founded on this, but it never “came off,” as my Mother would say.]

By 1887 my people were tired of Spenser Street and removed to 13 Portland Place, where the artist built himself a studio to his own design, a really beautiful room, hung with wonderful old tapestries and filled with fine old furniture; at one end were the curtains and red and brown Italian marble columns that he used in many of his pictures; at the other end was the great north window, with the ingenious, curved sky-light top which he invented himself, to obviate the narrowness of Devonshire Street. Here “lived” the two picture pianos (which he afterwards presented to the South Kensington Museum), black Spanish furniture, gilded Empire furniture and a motley collection of artist treasures—an inlaid marble shrine, a gilded Buddha (the perfection of peace, how I loved that!), Japanese bronze vases, ancient weapons, and a wonderful old bishop’s sofa; though why one bishop should require a sofa big enough for a dozen bishops and an archbishop to boot we could never discover.

In the middle of the floor near the north window stood the big easel, the brown wood “throne” close by; palette, brushes and colours in an old brown oak English desk with a lift-up table top. For all the beauty of the rest of the room, these simple things always seemed to me the centre of it and the user of them, the heart and brain; no other room or studio he ever had was so entirely his own, none ever matched his fine head and wonderful mind as this one did. It was his favourite—it was there he painted his last picture and there he told his wife: “I am finished.”

The drawing-rooms were papered with a patterned gold paper over which was superimposed a matte-white painted pattern of Orchardson’s own design—a sort of fleur-de-lis, I think—through which the gold shone; a beautiful paper that caused my Mother, and later tenants, considerable trouble because nothing would induce my Father to have it changed.

“Her Mother’s Voice,” and “The Rivals,” are almost exact portraits of the drawing-room—indeed, the whole of the house was a “property” house, full of sometimes dilapidated, but always beautiful things; it was difficult to get suitable stuffs to re-upholster the chairs, and they remained torn until a happy accident of a shop-window discovered the right material.

My brother Charlie was by this time at Linton House School, kept by a brother-in-law of Mr. Pettie’s, my parents having decided against a public school for any of their sons, a decision they very much regretted in after years.

I was sent to a celebrated girls’ school near by where French was taught in such a manner that my Mother used to re-correct my French exercises after they had been “corrected” at school. For history and geography we were made to learn a couple of pages off by heart more or less and no explanations were ever given. So after two wasted terms I was sent to a cousin of Mr. Pettie’s, a Miss Palmer, where I remained till I left school for good (oh, joyous day!) and came home—to learn.

My Father was my teacher, often in “long language” that would have made a dictionary a comfort. At meal times, at any time he would discourse on art, politics, history; and from him I learned a deep reverence for the Creator, and respect for every Faith of whatsoever sort—he was angered if anyone spoke of Mahommedans and Buddhists as heathens, or in fact anyone of any religion.

In all the thirty years before my marriage we only quarrelled twice, and each time the cause was the same—I very foolishly thought that he believed that I was not telling the truth, and that I would take from no one. Both quarrels ended in the same way, by his putting his arm round my shoulders and kissing me, saying that he would never disbelieve me and that he was very sorry for any misunderstanding. To this day I remember his quivering arm and his strong face pale with distress.

He would brook no contradiction, however, and I usually, to avoid being “sat on,” put my contradictory remarks in question form. When he “sat on” people he did it very thoroughly, though, my Mother assured me, unconsciously.

As an example of his caustic wit, here is the tale of a young man who suffered severely from side, and said to my Father, “Haw—you don’t smoke—haw?”

“No,” replied my Father, “I don’t even bite my nails.”

We were all rather inclined to use our “little Mother” as a buffer; one felt one’s brains quite sufficiently worm-like without having the fact rubbed in even unconsciously. But if one went to him for advice and sympathy one got them full measure and running over; no one was ever kinder.

He soon found out that school bored me and that I was homesick, and offered a Saturday expedition in his kind understanding way.

On his asking “what form the expedition was to take,” I shyly said the National Gallery, much to his surprise; he had not supposed that any of his children were interested in art, he said. A hansom took us there, and doubtless we saw many pictures, but of them all I remember only one, and that is as clear as though this jaunt were yesterday—Gainsborough’s “Mrs Siddons.” My Father pointed out its various beauties, in particular the wonderful hand. Then he called my attention to Reynolds and then to the Turner and Claude hanging close together, for comparison, he said; but we went back to the “Mrs Siddons” several times.

My Father, by the way, once said he had never had any text-books on art; his father had given him Reynolds’ book when he was a boy, but he never read farther than the first chapter.

One morning coming home from school for the holidays I went to the studio to greet my Father during working hours and found him gazing at a new canvas, spotless and exciting.

“What is it to be?” I asked.

“That,” he answered, turning to me with a quizzical smile, “that is the very finest picture I ever painted. I always see the most wonderful pictures on the bare white canvas, but the trouble is to seize them and fix them; one is always disappointed.”

Taking up his sketching portfolio—a stiff cover filled with ordinary kitchen paper—he showed me the sketch of the new picture that shone so vividly before him; just a wilderness of pencil smudges indicating light and shadow—nothing else. Even with the aid of his vigorous directing thumb it was almost impossible to see anything; so I begged him to let me see him begin a picture, a very rare privilege. He took up a piece of charcoal and with a few careful but quick and unhesitating strokes, he made the bare canvas live.

Some days later I saw the picture again; each figure was well indicated and each head had the eyes, nose and mouth carefully drawn in pencil, and some bits were half finished.

Photo The French Gallery
THE CHINESE CABINET
By kind permission of the Liverpool Art Gallery.

About four years later I was again present at the beginning of a picture; this time there was a pair of eyes on the canvas, live, recognizable eyes, finished, but nothing else whatever.

“But where is the rest of the face?” I asked, “and who is it?”

“Oh, there.” An energetic thumb “drew” an imaginary nose and mouth on the canvas. “It is Lord Kelvin; he has the most wonderful introspective eyes; they seem to be seeing inwardly all the time.”

“Then these painted eyes must be exactly like. But where is the pencil drawing? I can see none.”

“There is none,” he answered; “I used to draw things in very carefully, but that was before I was sure of myself. Now I am sure, and pencil drawing is unnecessary. I just go straight ahead.”

“I should like to see your magic brushes,” said I.

With a smile he held out two miserable specimens of worn-out hog’s hair brushes, one with three hairs left, the other with four—literally.

“Then the magic is the painter, I think,” and my dear modest Father blushed like a schoolboy.

To relieve our embarrassment I asked: “I bet Leighton doesn’t use worn-out rubbish of the sort?”

“No, indeed, he has a proper collection of brushes, hog’s hair, camel’s hair, badger’s hair and all the rest of it.”

“Other people admire Leighton; I don’t. Why? Am I so very wrong?”

“No, you are quite right; he can’t draw, he can’t paint, and he is no colourist.”

“You are severe. And Millais?”

My Father’s face lighted up with enthusiasm. “Ah! that is a different matter altogether; he can draw, he is a colourist, and, moreover, he can paint.”

“What do you mean exactly by the expression ‘he can paint’?”

“I mean he understands the technique of painting, that he uses his medium, the actual paints, in a proper manner.”

“Then you admire Millais?”

“Tremendously.”

“And Sargent?”

“Magnificent, if he would only finish things, but he can’t. Some people never learn to finish; they see so far and no further.”

“Who do you consider the greatest of all artists?”

“Titian,” he answered. “Most people put Raphael first, but he died young and I don’t think he attained his full strength. Painters are never precocious like musicians, which shows that painting is an intellectual art and music merely emotional—a child can feel but cannot think, the brain is not developed.”

He was unable to tell me which was the greater, Reynolds or Gainsborough, they were too different; Reynolds, perhaps, was the more forceful, Gainsborough the more refined.

On my saying that his own and Gainsborough’s work was not really alike, yet had certain qualities of refinement, I thought, in common, he blushed with pleasure and fell to pondering the matter; finally he agreed shyly, and remarked that “art was not fine art unless it was refined.”

Our conversation was ended by Lord Kelvin coming in to sit: I should have recognized him anywhere merely by the painted eyes.

On another occasion I watched my Father painting an Aubusson carpet—just straight ahead—no pencil marks, no charcoal, not a sign of any perspective mysteries.

“How on earth do you do it?” I ejaculated as the magic carpet grew under my eyes—never a hesitation, never an alteration. He could offer no explanation except, “I just see it.”

As I put his brushes in turpentine and cleaned his palette I remarked that the latter looked almost as though it had not been used. He laughed as he said: “Yes, some fellahs like to paint their palettes, but I prefer to paint my picture!”

“But you do paint very thin, don’t you?”

“Not really. I remember Pettie complained of my paint being too thin one day when he was looking at a carpet I had just been working on. So I asked him how many carpets he supposed were there, and he answered, “One, of course, I can see the canvas.” “Well,” I answered, “there are two carpets underneath that one.”

“Could you always draw in perspective as easily as you can now?” I asked.

“No, not quite, but it was never any real trouble to me—a pin and a bit of thread were all I required. Did I ever tell you about the deck of the Bellerophon in ‘Napoleon’? Pettie thought the boards would be an awful business and said he would send me a man who made a job of doing difficult perspective drawings for painters. The man came and I left him at it. When I came back late that night the man was gone and the drawing finished—quite correct, but all wrong! The deck was standing on end. So I sent for the housemaid’s scrubbing brush and scrubbed out the poor man’s work-of-hours. Then before going to bed I drew it in again, without any trouble, not as a lined, flat thing really is, which is perspective, but as the eye sees it, which is incorrectly. It is no use drawing what the eye does not see.”

One day returning from the Tate Gallery where I had been looking at “The First Cloud,” I remarked: “What a rage the woman is in—her eyes must be simply flashing fire.”

“Eyes flashing fire,” my Father exclaimed, “that is absolute nonsense; eyes can’t flash fire—except, perhaps, a dog’s, which refract light. But a human eye is only a mirror and has no expression whatsoever in itself—the expression is entirely in the lids.”

After discussing Millais’ “Chill October” and other landscapes, I remarked: “I wish you would paint a landscape.”

“That’s one of the things I am always going to do,” he answered, “a landscape painter’s life is the most delightful there is. Most landscapes, you know, are merely copies of nature, not really pictures at all. What is all right in nature is always wrong on the flat surface of a picture; you must select.”

“Which is your best picture?” I asked.

“I haven’t painted it yet—it is always the next one, the one I see on the bare canvas.”

Orchardson was a severe but very kind and most interesting critic. It was quite exciting when he was on the Council and Hanging Committee of the Royal Academy; who was in and who was out, and were there any new men? All told under promise of complete secrecy, of course. He sometimes even telegraphed from Piccadilly to my Mother at Portland Place as: “Montagu South Johnstone first room Lyric left centre second Charlie only portrait Orchardson.”

On my asking if it were not very hard work, he replied that hanging was, but merely being on the Council^[2] was quite easy; all you had to do was to sit still and wave your hand to the carpenters to pass on the pictures as fast as they could bring them up. Pictures of genius or of outstanding merit were accepted without hesitation or discussion.^[3] It was the doubtful ones that caused all the trouble. When several pictures were all more or less bad it was very difficult to choose the least bad; it was then that the personal equation—the favouritism and unfairness the Academy was accused of—might possibly come into play.

If there was nothing to choose between the pictures, one of the members would say, “I know the man that painted that, let’s give him a chance.” It was only natural that that picture should be marked D. But it rarely happened, and in no case was a bad picture given preference over a good one. No doubt the Academy made mistakes occasionally, all human institutions do, but after all it was the R.A.’s interest to choose the best pictures possible for their exhibition. As to the gossip of the general public that the Academy refused to elect the best men, it was ridiculous; to start with, the general public had no right whatsoever to criticize the Royal Academy, which was and is a private institution; to go on with, it was utterly absurd to suppose that a body constituted for the express purpose of encouraging art would refuse admittance to the best artists.

Orchardson was extraordinarily loyal to the R.A. and would not admit that any artist worthy of election was an “outsider” except by his own choice.

There was an example of the rubbish sent in to the R.A. that my Father always remembered. The carpenter brought a picture and stood it up before the Council. “That’s topsy-turvy,” said the Council. The picture was turned. “No, no, the other way.” Again the picture was turned. Again “no.” “Well, there’s only one more way; let’s try that,” said the Council. The picture was turned once more, but still no subject was discoverable; and just for fun it was turned again several times, but the learned Council never found either the subject or even which side up it was intended to go. So it was marked with an X, and no doubt the artist thought the R.A. most unfair and prejudiced.

The income of the R.A. is spent chiefly on its free art schools, to which admission is obtained by examination. There is a permanent curator, but the real teaching is done by the Academicians themselves, who voluntarily undertake to visit for a year, in an honorary capacity. Orchardson was visitor several times; in 1883 or 4, when my Mother wrote in her diary, “Quiller has to go to the life class as well as the other, I am so sorry as it will be too hot for him, and besides he is sure to want to paint a nude figure,” which remark perhaps explains why he never painted a nude figure; people often wondered. And again in ’90 something.

I heard from my brother, who was a student at the ’90 time, that his criticisms were amongst the most helpful of all—severe, lucid and entirely kind and charming; he was a great favourite, and there were seldom absentees on his days.

Among the students at the time were Charles Sims (now R.A.), Speed, Byam-Shaw, Baumer, besides my brother Charlie.

Coming home from the R.A. one day, my Father told us of a new painter a student still. “He can paint and he is a real colourist, and colour, you know, is born in you and can’t be taught. But he can’t draw, and I’ve just been slating him and telling him he must learn, for drawing can be learnt.”

On my writing to ask Mr. Sims if he remembered this compliment—the greatest I think I ever heard my Father pay a young painter, he sent me the following letter:

Orchardson was in great demand, not only amongst young painters, but even amongst those who might be supposed to have “arrived.” As early as the Spenser Street days he received the following letter from Sant, R.A., a man much older than himself.

Another artist he visited at intervals was a certain woman-painter, who had a loud and lively manner, somewhat flirtatious I fancy, though I was rather young at the time to notice more than that she was my pet aversion and my brother’s—why do children sometimes dislike people in an apparently unreasonable way? She sat for one of the secondary figures in “Her first Dance,” which, of course, entailed her coming to Spenser Street several times, and, of course, staying to lunch or dinner.

My Mother records in her diary, “After Dinner I had to go upstairs by myself and have a little cry—some people are so tiring, and it is so nice to sit in the dark and think a little.”

All the same my Mother kept this especially for this biography. “The time approaches and the ‘trembles’ cometh on! Oh wherefore tarry the wheels of thy chariot??? Really and truly I am all at sea, waiting for you in desperation maist despairing. Could you manage the most hurried look round?”

Now my Mother’s diary again:

Many years afterwards my people gave a dinner party; amongst others whom I forget, there were an R.A.’s good-looking but dull wife, and an exceedingly pretty woman, not an actress, but a sort of “Scotch connection” of the theatre. My Father was to “take in” the R.A.’s wife, but suddenly and without warning he offered his arm to the pretty woman and went off with her to the dining-room in his jaunty fashion, leaving my Mother to rearrange her table as best she could. Which she did with considerable success.

Photo The Art Reproduction Co.
NAPOLEON ON BOARD THE BELLEROPHON, 1880
By kind permission of the Berlin Photographic Society and the Art Reproduction Co.

The naughty man flirted the whole of dinner time with his pretty partner; after dinner he came to her side again in the studio; at departing time he offered her his arm and escorted her to her carriage.

When we were alone, I asked my Mother:

“Does he often do that?”

“Oh, yes,” she replied quite casually, “he likes pretty women.”

“And don’t you mind?”

“No, why should I—he is mine.”

“And were you never jealous of all the girls he flirted with before you were married?”

“No,” she said again, “why should I be? I got him.”

This same pretty woman asked W. Q. O.’s permission at a dinner party at Mr [?] for a friend of hers to paint a copy of “Napoleon on board the Bellerophon.” He, unable to resist a pretty pleader, gave permission, totally against his own rules, for the single figure of Napoleon; but afterwards he got his wife to write rescinding the permission. Evidently he needed his wife’s help to resist a pretty woman; but he did not like saying “No” to anyone, however undeserving.

To return to the “visitings”:

It was not unusual for people, both men and women, to write to our artist’s wife when asking for critical visits, “he is so much more likely to grant my request if it comes through you.”

Tom Graham, that great and old friend, sometimes wrote:

But at other times even he applied to my Mother when “The Master,” as he called him, was very busy and difficult to persuade.

A few friends criticized W. Q. O., as:

Another great friend, MacWhirter, liked advice pretty frequently, and wrote on one occasion: “Come up instantly before I begin so that you can’t blow me up afterwards!”

Tom Graham was never even an R.A., and it was years after Orchardson and Pettie were R.A.’s before MacWhirter received the same honour, yet neither the disappointment nor the long delay ever interfered with the great friendship of these four, which says a good deal for the niceness of all of them.

Abbey, Macbeth, Herkomer, Briton Rivière, Parsons, Hacker, S. J. Solomon, Fildes, and a host of others all asked for and appreciated W. Q. O.’s advice and criticisms.

On “touching-up” days at the R.A. he was so much in demand for last-minute criticisms that he had little time to examine his own work; and any praise from him was valued immensely.

Orchardson went, admired “The Bürgermeister,” and strongly advised sending it to the R.A., which advice proved wise, for the picture had a great success.

In 1895, W. Q. O. was on the Hanging Committee, and of course received many “I hope you will remember me” notes; the following from Herkomer, however, is interesting:

When “Lululand” was first finished Herkomer gave a house-warming ball, to which my Father, Mother and I went.

Mr (now Sir Hubert) Herkomer himself showed us over the house, which was built in imitation of an old German castle, complete even to the justice room, very wonderful, but decidedly draughty and uncomfortable to live in we thought. Mr Herkomer, however, was very proud of it, especially of the wood-carving, which had all been done by his father and uncles from Landsburg.

The bedrooms upstairs must have been in modern style I think, for I remember two, one “papered” with gold canvas and the other with silver—most unrestful.

We danced in the studio and Mr Herkomer wore a sort of modified Court dress, why, we did not discover. He had also shaved off his beard, and on his asking my Mother if she did not think his appearance improved, she replied “No” in her sincere fashion.

“Why not?” asked Mr Herkomer.

“Well, I think your mouth looks better hidden,” answered my Mother, half smiling.

“Ah! but that is just it—my mouth should not be hidden, it is so strong, and I like to show the strength; it is an advantage to me, especially with my students.”

The Abbeys were very nice Anglicized Americans; my people went to stay with them in Gloucestershire, and they came to us at Hawley. I remember hearing of a particular dinner-party at the Abbeys in Tite Street, where Orchardson sat on one side of Mrs Abbey and Whistler on the other. Mrs Abbey was a good hostess and contrived to set these two witty men talking against each other, with such success that all other talk was silenced and the whole table listened to such an exchange of wit as they had never heard before. I asked my Father to tell me some of the things that had been said, but he said it was just a series of “sparks, ephemeral nothings, that one remark led on to another; and you know when I thought of it afterwards I was really ashamed of having interrupted the whole table and monopolized the conversation like that. But we could cap one another and . . . but how we laughed.”

And he laughed again at the mere recollection.

About the same time W. Q. O. accepted Mr Abbey’s invitation “to wander in the-direction of 33 Tite Street to see the Sargent portraits that have just come from America, one is simply exquisite, and all beyond anything he has done.”

When my Father came home, I asked his opinion of them, and he said, as nearly as I can remember the words:

“Yes, they are magnificent, but they lack finish—he can’t finish. The tip of a finger, for instance, is not a streak of pink paint though that streak may be effective in the distance.”

Years before, on April 2nd, 1886, my Mother notes in her diary: “A good many callers, amongst them Sargent, who came yesterday and Q. was out, and again to-day, to thank Q. for the letter he had written to him telling him how good his twilight picture was.”

Sargent never quite came up to the expectations that Orchardson had formed of him.

Orchardson never painted from memory that I know of; indeed, I remember very well his surprise on being told that a finished sketch by “Freddy” Walker, that he had been admiring, was painted entirely from memory in little more than a couple of hours. He himself required a model that at least suggested the subject.

Millais, on the other hand, required an absolute model for everything. Orchardson several times mentioned in illustration of this, that on going to Millais’ studio one day he found that in order to paint a small portion of a fountain or pond Millais had been obliged to have a whole fountain built up in his studio in order to get the correct shape of the part-circle he wished to draw in the corner of his picture.

As a rule Orchardson admired Millais’ work immensely, but I heard him criticize some of his later work very severely, adding, “but he can always paint.”

Both Leighton and Tadema wanted critical admiration rather than advice, I fancy. I have heard my Father speak well of some of Tadema’s work, but however hard I search my mind I can remember no word of praise for Leighton’s work, though for the man as President he had the greatest admiration. When Lord Leighton died Monsieur Gauchez (who, as Paul Leroi, was a great French critic, it must be remembered) wrote to my Father hoping he would accept the Presidentship of the R.A., and gave a description of Leighton.^[4]

The butler was buttling in a haunted but hilarious house, and coming upstairs one night at the haunted hour, he saw the ghost. With great presence of mind he gravely sat down, took off his boots and threw them at the ghost, through whom they passed, while the butler, suddenly frightened, scuttled off to bed.

Miss Corkran almost frightened herself in telling the tale and was as nearly offended as so friendly an old soul could be, at my Father’s hearty laughter, in which my Mother and I joined.

Amongst many other letters from her this occurs:

When the Perfect President if imperfect painter died, Millais was his natural successor; he had been connected with the R.A. since his boyhood, and with the possible exception of Orchardson was certainly the greatest painter of his day.

Even so there seems to have been some talk of Orchardson as President for I find the following note:

There was some doubt as to whether Millais would stand, for he was known to be mortally ill. He was elected, but died soon after.

To be or not to be President was the question that now presented itself to the one painter whose supremacy was undisputed, Sargent being still something of a new man with a new method.

Orchardson gave the matter his deepest thought; to be President of the Royal Academy was an honour not to be lightly foregone, especially for his wife’s sake. But was he strong enough to perform the duties of the office? His sense of duty was very high, his health had been failing for some time, a great unhappiness had come into his life, so that he no longer cared for social life in the way he had hitherto done. He discussed the matter in all its aspects with his wife and finally told her to decide for him.

Ambition, or love and long life to the loved one?

Love prevailed and my Father stood aside and voted for Briton Rivière; Poynter was elected.

Photo T. & R. Annan
HOUSEKEEPING IN THE HONEYMOON, 1882
By kind permission of W. D. Booth, Esq., owner, and Messrs. Reid & Lefevre.

Afterwards my Mother received her reward in being told by a Doctor—Sir Lauder Brunton, I fancy—that she had added, by her unselfish decision, at least ten years to her delicate husband’s life.

Of all the many letters W. Q. O. received, begging him most earnestly to accept the Presidency, only those of Monsieur Gauchez reflect Orchardson’s own views:^[5]

In another letter Gauchez wrote that W. Q. O. was quite right to prefer liberty to any honorific position, but before being a situation for a deep courtier, the Presidency should be the coronation of a noble career of art, exclusively of art, as was Orchardson’s.

Two extracts from my Mother’s diary may fitly finish this account of the R.A. Presidentship, 1896 and 1897:

But though unable to accept the Presidency Orchardson was not averse from honours.

In 1890, Oxford conferred the D.C.L. on him.

They duly went to Oxford and much enjoyed the beautiful old-world place and the antique ceremonies. If I remember rightly my Father walked in the procession with Stanley, who had just returned from “Darkest Africa,” was the hero of the hour, and was received with vociferous cheers.

On my Father showing himself at home in cap and gown, at my request, I could only exclaim: “Hallo! Van Dyck!” so great was the resemblance; on which he smilingly told me that that had been his nickname in the Academy Schools in Edinburgh.

A good many years later I was in the picture gallery at The Hague, and on entering one of the galleries, was startled to see, as I thought, a portrait of my Father as a young man—I had not known of its existence. But on going nearer, it proved to be a portrait of Van Dyck, by himself. Even close to, the likeness was striking, and no doubt the Elizabethan and D.C.L. cap added to it as on the previous occasion.

On February 18th, 1895, the French Ambassador wrote to my Father, announcing that he had been made Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur, and inviting him to come to the Embassy in London to receive les insignes et le brevet de la distinction.

W. Q. O. went, and I tried to get an account of what happened, but could only gather from the modest man that it was a very pleasant little ceremony of many bows and pretty speeches. “The greatest artist in England,” said the Ambassador, and “France the leader of the world’s art,” said the other; and so on, and so on.

In 189(?) W. Q. O. was elected “Correspondent de L’Institut de France” unanimously.

Monsieur Gauchez wrote congratulations and the news that Bouguereau was unexpectedly one of his warmest supporters and that W. Q. O. was made first candidate. He also sent a list of the people who must, “according to custom,” be personally thanked for the election and a specimen French letter.

In 1900, Orchardson was awarded the Grand Prix, by “unanimous vote,” according to Monsieur Gauchez, who says he has been inquiring amongst influential friends for a higher rank in the Legion of Honour and had now received a letter saying it would be officially published next month. It was a great joy to his old age to be the first to inform his great friend of the new greatly merited success.^[6]

In 1901, Orchardson was made “Membre d’honneur de l’Académie des Beaux Arts,” and wrote:

[Draft letter unsigned.]

In 1890 my Grandfather died at Westgate, and my Father lost a great friend and my Mother her confidant.

Finding the place too sad without their “old darling,” my people left Westgate and for some time had no country house.

To go back a little. My Father had caught whooping cough from his children at Westgate, which had very considerably weakened his health—although he did not realise it at the time—and he no longer cared for violent games such as tennis; so that leaving his tennis court was not such a loss as it might have been.

He took to fishing instead, introduced to it by Pettie, and it remained his chief amusement to the end of his life. “Dry-Fly” was his favourite form of it, though he used wet-fly in Scotland, and also salmon-fished sometimes, though he did not care so much for that—he said it was more a matter of luck and physical strength than of skill, whereas dry-fly trout fishing was nearly all skill; you first stalked your trout and then angled for him, placing your fly neatly just a foot above his resting or watching place, so that it should float downsteam directly over “his” nose. Then “strike” at the psychological moment and you were into him, at the end of a hair-like gut, a thread-like line and a slender split-cane rod. On a South of England chalk-stream a two-pounder was a prize—if you got him; he could easily break your line if you were not skilful. And anything less than a pound must be put back.

Besides the actual fishing there was the pleasure of being in the open air in beautiful country, of watching all the living creatures, especially water-flies; from this time on, my Father knew a great deal about flies, real ones as well as artificial. He tried “tying” flies for himself, but found it trying to the eyes as well as rather a tiresome job, so gave it up.

My Father went down, was fascinated by the sport, the Avon, and the countryside, and joined in as a partner with his old friend Mr Morten (William Black’s brother-in-law) and “a” Mr St. Quentin.

Amesbury was a delightful sleepy old forgotten village in those days; very much waked up, I fancy, since the War Office took possession of Salisbury Plain. He went down frequently, his wife usually with him (they were seldom apart) and they stayed at the inn, spending the whole day at different parts of the four mile reach, according to the weather. They made the acquaintance there of Sir Edmund Antrobus, the owner then of Stonehenge, which they visited, I believe. But with a genuine fisherman on a fishing expedition it is fish, fish, fish, from morning till night, and he can think of nothing else. At any rate, I never remember Stonehenge being mentioned but it led to “Ah yes! I remember there was a big fellow down below the mill,” and many another fishing tale, which I, not being a fisher, am unable to recollect; but not a word about Stonehenge.

South of England chalk-streams look the mildest and safest of rivers as they flow on in their slow sleepy way; but their mudbanks are treacherous. Moor Hatch, the last reach of this fishing, was some three or four miles from Amesbury, and my Mother sometimes amused herself driving her fisherman there, going back to the village and returning for him in the evening.

One day, she left him as usual and he prepared his rod and his fly, pulled up his thigh-boots, which he usually wore à la Cromwell, and stepped into the water on to, as he thought, a bed of shingle clearly seen through a foot or so of water. But as he touched the seeming shingle, down he went into mud, and down, and down. Quick as lightning he dropped his rod, and wrenching himself round, contrived to grasp a small tuft of grass, the only thing within reach. The mud and water reached to his waist already. In the distance he saw his wife driving leisurely away. He shouted, he blew his policeman’s whistle—carried for just such an eventuality—but his wife went serenely on all unsuspicious of his danger; never had he felt so neglected, never before felt that his wife ought to be able to hear him at whatsoever distance. As she disappeared round a bend in the road, he realized that he must save himself or be drowned; the mud and water reached to his shoulders now. So he began to pull gently at his slender tuft of grass and the mud kept sucking him in like quicksand. But the grass held, and by and by he was able to grasp another firmer piece, and finally managed to drag himself out, caked with mud, but safe.

IN THE TRIFORIUM
By kind permission of H. S. Brown, Esq.

My Mother and small brother went down and duly admired the wild roses. The river was almost unapproachable for water-meadows, so the hangers-on as well as the fishermen had to be provided with waders. My Mother found a convenient stile whereon to sit and enjoy Three Men in a Boat, but she laughed so much that she fell off, and the fishermen blamed her for a blank day—even her light weight was sufficient to shake the bank and scare the fish. So they said.

My Father was much troubled by cold feet when wading all day, but finally discovered the remedy: two pairs of woollen socks, one pair of indiarubber socks, one pair of woollen socks and then his waterproof-leather boots. Which recipe I insert for the benefit of other fishermen.

Sir Walter Gilbey was a friend, so were Mr Joseph and Monsieur Gauchez, and there were “many who loved him,” but the friends my Father always loved best were those of old days—Pettie, Tom Graham and MacWhirter, and of these Pettie was the greatest; in Edinburgh student days, in London, when they lived next door to each other or together, and right down to Pettie’s death. Though marriage, of course, separated them a little, it made no difference to the friendship, and the husbands and wives interchanged visits, made theatre parties, dined with each other and so on.

“Q. O.” stood godfather to Pettie’s daughter, and Pettie was godfather to one of “Q. O.’s” sons. At the wedding of Pettie’s daughter to Mr McCunn the composer, “Q. O.” was one of the witnesses; my Mother, of course, and I by special invitation went with him to the vestry to see the signing of the register. What a crowd of old friends were there, and what gaiety and laughter!

The rest I have forgotten, even to the bridal gown. I never could see the difference between one bridal gown and another, but I remember my Mother’s bonnet, a spray of lilac fastened to a bow of lilac-coloured ribbon; as a head-dress it was charming, but as a head-covering or hat it left much to be desired.

Shortly after this the last Orchardson baby arrived, and my Father wrote to me at school:

My father was on the jury once that I remember, he also complained of the discomfort, and draughts, but found the arguments interesting; he took the matter very seriously and gave the case his closest attention.

Pettie’s letters are always a friend’s and usually scrawled, the writing getting bigger and bigger and winding up with a huge J.P. The cross was my Father’s and Mother’s wedding present to Mrs McCunn, an antique pendant of turquoises and pearls.

The Mr Seton mentioned in this letter was a rather clever amateur painter introduced to W. Q. O. by J. D. Watson, whose pupil he was. My Father and Mother and I visited Mr Seton at Heath House (in Shropshire), a lovely old place near the Welsh border; much of the house was oak panelled, the oak black with age and so hard that no nail could be driven into it. The dining-room was Jacobean, and was furnished with chairs made from the pattern of one belonging to my Father that appears as an overturned stool in “The Challenge.”

Mr Seton was also an amateur farmer, and could not understand why he could not make farming pay. My Father went with him to see the farm one day, and before reaching any corner Mr Seton started whistling loudly, at the same time slackening his pace. My Father asked why, and Mr Seton explained that he was afraid his men might not be working, and as he did not like scolding, he always gave notice of his approach. A friendly habit that no doubt explains why farming did not pay.

In 1893 Pettie was very ill and all his friends—the lovable man had many—were very anxious. At last Q. O. received the following letter, well written at the beginning but weak and straggly at the end:

Shortly afterwards my Father received a letter from C. E. Johnson (No. 4 of the Fitzroy Square days) telling him that Pettie had been obliged to undergo a very sudden and severe operation—ear and brain.

1893.

A few days later Pettie succumbed, and I remember my Father inveighing bitterly against Doctors for raising false hopes by saying that an operation had been successful, when, in fact, it was not. Then his sense of justice reasserted itself, and he added, “I suppose they only refer to the operation itself and its local effects and not to the collateral effects on the patient’s constitution”—as nearly as I can remember the exact words.

Orchardson was a member of many clubs in London, twenty or so, I believe. Amongst others, The Arts Club, The M.C.C. 1872, The Athenæum 1880, and latterly The Fly Fishers 1890. At first he frequented The Arts, but after being elected to the Athenæum (under the “Distinguished men” rule which allows of immediate election) he went there almost daily, usually to afternoon tea, just the right distance for a walk, and the toast was more perfect than any home toast could ever be, not to mention the black currant jam.

My Mother’s diary notes:

That the Athenæum was not quite perfect is indicated by a postcard from Horsley, R.A.: “Pray vote for your eminent countryman Sir James Crichton Browne to-morrow at the Athenæum, whose election is threatened (on dit) by sundry stoopid anti-scientists.”

Later on Sir J. Crichton Browne wrote a note to say that he had seconded Henry Arthur Jones at the Athenæum, “but one must walk gingerly as you have, I am told, some very explosive material on the Board.”

Orchardson served as a member of the Committee of the club from 1900 to 1903.

Photo T. & R. Annan
VOLTAIRE, 1883
By kind permission of the Edinburgh National Gallery.

My Father was evidently chairman at one of the Glasgow University Club Dinners about 1895. For once he wrote out his speech (as a rule he spoke from notes only), but the question is did he make this speech or another extempore, as is quite likely:

Another ending:

Another Club speech was at the Fly-Fishers’ Club in ’97. A few days’ afterwards the hon. secretary wrote for his dinner subscription (for two years!), and added, “I hope you enjoyed your dinner in spite of the little misunderstanding as to whose health you were to propose!”

William Senior, Editor of the Fishing Gazette, wrote: “I did not see your note till yesterday, and then it was too late. I am afraid the reporter didn’t hear you as the report he sent in was meagre. But I hope, such as it is, there is nothing wrong.”

The following speech I take from the report in the Fly-Fishers’ Gazette:

I find the following note, possibly for a speech:

In June ’92 Mr Seymour Trower wrote asking Orchardson to join “The Kinsmen,” a little club of English and Americans who meet occasionally to dine; a club with no local habitation, no entrance fee, no subscription, no committee, and no rules to which anyone pays attention.

A list of the members was enclosed. At the last meeting Mr Trower was authorized to write and ask W. Q. O. to join, which Orchardson did, but not till 1894; he probably forgot all about it, but having joined, he enjoyed it immensely, one reason being that he thought British and Americans should be friends as well as “relations”; he was indignant at any quarrels, but also at the “tweaking of the Lion’s tail.”

Another little club is described by Sir David Murray:

My brother Charlie was a member of the Punch Bowl and my Father dined there one night when he—Charlie—was chairman, and had to propose the health of the guest of honour.

On my asking what sort of speech the Chairman had made, my Father replied: “Very good—and he spoke of me as his ‘best friend, his greatest friend,’ no son could pay his father a greater or better compliment.”

And to this day I remember the pride and pleasure in my Father’s voice, the half-smile on his face. He was, indeed, a friend in thought, in word, in deed; utterly reliable; always ready to believe the best of everyone, slow to think badly of anyone; vigorous in his denunciation of evil, but very gentle to the evil-doer. He would not allow his family to criticize people, even in a friendly way; so much so that if my Mother and I wanted a little harmless mother-and-daughterly gossip, we had to indulge ourselves in private!

The Academy banquet is a very sedate affair nowadays, but in old days its sobriety was only comparative. My Father used to laugh heartily over the following tale, which he told me (it may be a chestnut):

One night Turner was coming away from the banquet with a friend, each leaning on the other.

“By Jove,” said the friend, “there are two cabs.”

“Two cabs,” exclaimed Turner, “yesh, there are always two.”

“But which shall I take?”

With drunken wisdom, Turner answered: “I’ll tell you the shecret of it—take the firsht one—I alwaysh do.”

In May 1889 a dinner was given to Whistler at the Criterion by 150 artists, of whom Orchardson was one. Whistler, it appears, made “four or five epigrams by way of a speech and then broke down. Edmund Yates made the best speech of the evening.”

In October 1896 the members of the “Aberdeen Artists’ Society” gave a dinner to celebrate the completion of the preparations for the exhibition; the Marquis of Huntly presided. Orchardson was amongst the guests, and was well known personally to many of them, having lately painted Sir David Stewart, who had been Lord Provost for nine years; there were many old friends there besides.

Sir David proposed The Royal Academy, with which he coupled the name of Orchardson, to whom he gave great praise.

I take my Father’s speech from the Aberdeen Free Press:

Amongst my Father’s favourite private dinners were Sir Henry Thompson’s “Octaves”—men only. Sir Henry was a gourmet as well as a celebrated doctor; at one time he was a vegetarian, and on my Father asking him what had made him change his mind, Sir Henry explained that on further reflection he found that the vegetarian cow had five stomachs to digest its vegetation, but man had only one, therefore it was advisable for man to employ the cow’s stomachs to do some digesting for him.

My Father would not eat steak because of its toughness, but one day, when he was not expected to be in, steak was served for luncheon. He remained in, however, said it was tough as usual, and asked his wife why she did not have her steaks cooked à la Sir Henry Thompson, 36 hours at a temperature of 156° or 172° (I forget), “we had some the other night and it melted in the mouth.” My Mother, being an ordinary mortal, did not think a more than ordinary mortal cook would undertake such cooking. My Father very practically suggested the gas fire, but without effect—a cook is a cook and not to be lightly frightened into giving notice.

The Seymour Trowers were favourite social friends and excellent hosts. Of course, conversation turned on tennis sometimes. Some one was lamenting to the Hampton Court marker that X, a well-known player, should have taken to drink. “Yes, sir,” was the reply, “but it’s much worse to think that Mr Heathcote should have taken to golf.”^[2]

Orchardson was dining with Sir Moses Montefiore, when Sir Moses remarked that he “wished very much that the head of the Jewish religion could meet the head of the Christian religion.” Quiller said “Why not?—a splendid idea”; so after further discussion an afternoon party and dinner in the evening at Sir Moses’ house in Thanet was arranged. “I [E. O.] unfortunately was ill, and could not go, but Quiller came home and said the meeting of the two heads was splendid.”

Leighton gave good dinners and at least one original invitation.

In 1893 Orchardson met J. M. Barrie, who wrote expressing a wish to meet again and inviting him to a dinner at the Garrick Club. Orchardson “retaliated” by asking Barrie to the Fly-Fishers’ Club dinner, an invitation Barrie accepted, but a few days before the dinner, wrote to say that he had been recalled to Scotland, “so shall not be able to come to your angling dinner. I am very sorry as I had felt as sure of it as the fisher is of the trout that is safe in the creel and then escapes by wabbling thro’ the hole. I do hope, though, that we shall meet again soon.

My Father delighted in Barrie’s plays, their insight into character, their refinement, their humour, their fantasy—and a certain gaiety of outlook—all pleased him, sending him home in a contented frame of mind.

In her diary my Mother writes in 1897:

“Problem” plays and works interested him, but I doubt if he actually liked them for he always turned away from anything ugly that he could not remedy. Even a wasp-waist in front of him in the street would cause him to cross the road hurriedly, a black eye gave him what may be called “the creeps,” and black weather “the blues.” But beauty in any form caused him the utmost pleasure.

The ugliest sight I ever saw was a drunken man in evening dress in Cavendish Square, at nine o’clock on a lovely Sunday morning; unfortunately some French friends were with me and remarked in superior tones: “We never see that in France.” I replied miserably that it was not usual to see it in England; and went to my Father for consolation.

He told me that no drunkard was ever reformed except by his own will, that other people could only help. Then he added slowly and reminiscently: “But I once cured a drunkard against his will.”

He would say no more, but told me instead of the beyond-cure, drunken violin mender in Edinburgh.

Until my Father grew delicate he and my Mother went to the theatre very frequently and much enjoyed first-nights especially, when my Father’s highly developed critical faculty enjoyed a special opportunity. Sarah Bernhardt occupied the first rank and everybody else second with him, I fancy. Irving he liked personally, but not as an actor, except in The Bells, and as Shylock; and in Hamlet why did he not obey Hamlet’s own injunctions to the players? was his criticism.

He enjoyed Ellen Terry and Mrs Kendal, but sometimes placed Winifred Emery higher than either. Forbes Robertson he placed above Tree; and Cyril Maude and Toole had little nooks of laughter to themselves.

I cannot remember my Father ever going to either an opera or a concert, but I know that he heard Mario, Jenny Lind, Grisi and Patti; he placed Mario first and Patti a long way behind Jenny Lind.

Shortly after reading Sir Harry Johnston’s book on Africa my people met him at dinner, and my Father gave me a most amusing description of him: “a great Proconsul of the Empire creeping shyly in behind his imposing and important wife—a dinghy humbly in tow behind a yacht under full sail.”

They dined several times with Mr Cardwell, at one time Irish Secretary and then Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. One night they had gone out to his house, but surprised their family by coming home again quite soon, my Mother with a bruise and cut on her forehead; she was evidently rather shaken, but my Father was quite cheerful and told us they had had an accident.

Photo T. & R. Annan
MARIAGE DE CONVENANCE, 1884
By kind permission of the Glasgow Art Gallery.

“We were just opposite the Oratory when a cab, coming at right angles, dashed into ours and knocked it right over. I was underneath and the Old Lady fell on me, and the other fellah’s horse fell on the top of our brougham—it was curious and unlucky she should be hurt and not I, she must have bumped herself in falling. I picked myself up and managed to open the door above my head, and pulled the Old Lady up after me. The horse was still on the top of the cab and screaming—I never heard a horse scream like that before. It screamed and screamed, and seemed to be caught tight and nobody could find out why. But at last I looked and saw that one of its legs was caught in the step of the cab. Everybody tried in a footling way to get the leg out and, of course, failed.

“So I saw I must take an active part in the proceedings and called for a pick-axe. In a moment a pick-axe appeared, in just the same remarkable way as the crowd had grown—out of nowhere. The policeman, London policemen always seem to be ‘there,’ climbed on the top of the cab and with three or four blows chopped off the step and released the screaming horse.”

My mother was a perfect Jonah in a cab, something was sure to happen; if she was alone the horse stumbled and she was thrown out over its head; one day she and my Father had just reached home when the horse reared and the cab tipped up backwards—they were left standing on their heads unhurt, but the cabby was more or less stunned; fortunately the harness broke.

Another time, when I was with her, the horse kicked its foot through the floor of the cab, and yet another time we had a bucking horse that bucked all the way from Portland Place to St. John’s Wood, and refused to draw up at Miss Fanny Davis’s, the pianist’s house, where we were due at a party—or perhaps it was going to the Macmillans, the publishing people—I forget—perhaps both times.

Even driving her own pony-chaise at Hawley she got wrecked, but that was her own fault—she dropped the reins and seized the baby when the pony shied; I never felt very safe when she was driving! except that the speed was safe—5 m.p.h.!

Archdeacon Sinclair gave interesting dinners, and Sunday luncheons to which my people sometimes went, and were much interested to meet genuine Highlanders, reminiscent of Bonnie Prince Charlie’s times, who even claimed to be Jacobites; the first Jacobites we met were in Aberdeen, real ones who thought Queen Victoria was not the rightful Queen and wanted some Bavarian in. One would have thought that the Queen’s own personality would have killed such out-of-date ideas and here were some more Jacobites—extraordinary.

After luncheon the St. Paul’s choir sang in the drawing-room, then the guests were expected to attend the afternoon service at St. Paul’s. Was this a subtle way, I wonder, of getting people to church who otherwise would not go? My Father, at any rate, enjoyed the singing and said it was almost perfect, great praise from one so difficult to please. He also remarked on the beauty of the clergymen’s voices, to the Archdeacon, who told him that the Clergy of St. Paul’s were partly chosen for their voices owing to the difficult acoustics.

We noticed the beautiful voices, especially at Leighton’s funeral, when they seemed to fill the vast building and overcome all defects. My Father, by the way, found the English Church funeral service very beautiful and moving. He was brought up a Presbyterian and approved the independence of the ministers, but I think he found, like many of us, that in practice few were worthy of that independence.

One thing he strongly disapproved in the English Church was the congregation having no say in the appointment of their parson and no power to turn him out.

From parsons to millionaires is a far cry, though not necessarily so far as many people, not millionaires, imagine. On June 18th, 1889, Mr. Carnegie invited my people to dine at the Hotel Metropole, to meet Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone and the new American Minister. Mr Carnegie was still very Scotch for he wound up the letter with “Scotland forever.”

I believe this was the only time my Father met Gladstone, and as I was only a child at the time, I did not hear anything about the dinner, but I remember my Mother took a dislike to him because “he looked down on women,” she thought, and “talked down to them.”

My Father grew up a Liberal, but when Gladstone changed, found himself obliged to vote Conservative in order to retain his opinions. He continued Conservative until Chamberlain started the Liberal Unionists, when he voted for that party and continued to do so for the rest of his life. Of the G.O.M. he said: “Gladstone’s wordiness is a cloak for his thoughts as the ink with which the cuttlefish surrounds itself is a means of hiding.”

My Father often spoke of Socialism, which he feared might come; he considered it would be the end of the country—or of any country—for it would turn the country that tried it into a nation of slaves and slave-drivers; it is human nature to work hard for your own, he said, but if the results of your hard work were taken away and the benefits divided amongst lazy people, no one would work unless a policeman were at hand to compel them.

My Father was an enthusiast for the Empire and Preference and strongly disapproved of Cobden’s one-sided, so-called Free Trade—“not free at all, because our goods remained heavily taxed abroad, whereas foreign goods could come into England free and so undersell our own people.” On its being pointed out to him how much our trade had increased since the introduction of (so-called) Free Trade, he would retort by pointing to Protectionist Germany and America and their much greater expansion—enormous.

He would then go on to speak of the wonderful thrift that had enabled France to pay off her enormous debt to Germany, of the great influence of France on Art and Literature, and of her probable decline. Germany had risen to power but the brutal Saxon could never replace artistic France. From there to artistic Japan and the extraordinary way she had in a few years superimposed Western civilization on her own Eastern form, and how wise Salisbury had been to make a treaty with this Eastern menace.

Japan, of course, led to the United States and their habit of “tweaking the Lion’s tail,” a cousinly habit perhaps, but supremely silly; the great English-speaking peoples should join definitely and rule the world with their beneficent sway, and so possibly, though not probably, prevent the Armageddon that would surely come—that indeed was coming, a relentless fate that only the wisest statesmanship could avert.

And who of all our statesmen had that wisdom? None.

Armageddon! Familiar word in my childhood and girlhood! Armageddon! Familiar Fate in my womanhood. War! Rebellion! Disaster! How glad I am my dear prophet died too soon to suffer from it all! He would have suffered horribly, more than most, for he possessed Imagination.

Some odd memories and letters may finish this chapter.

In February 1886, a stranger wrote asking for W. Q. O.’s support in his application for the Slade Professorship at Cambridge, to which W. Q. O. replied:

About 1885 my Father’s American nephew, John Allen, came over from Florida, U.S.A., on a visit to Ivyside; a nice enough boy, but a terrible tease—he boasted that he had made his cousins (us) cry every day for a whole week. His enormous appetite caused his Uncle much amusement, and his swimming was the admiration of all Westgate. I fancy he was meant to remain with us but my parents sent him home. Then his father died and the boy worked his passage back to England before the mast. This piece of energy and the boy’s often declared intention of being a sailor made my Father apprentice him to a ship.

Part of a draft letter to Mr McGregor (I think the rest was white-ant-eaten here in S.A.):

John voyaged to Australia and returned with a great collection of boomerangs and spears for his Uncle. Charlie and John took the boomerangs to Regent’s Park, where their experiments at throwing them were so successful that a park-keeper stopped the sport.

My Father was staying with some of the Gilbeys once upon a time when boomerangs were brought out. They were thrown but no one could make them return in their flight. W. Q. O. said he felt sure he knew the peculiar twist required, and threw one. It flew straight ahead, then circled and came back—right into a glass-house just behind the thrower. He threw no more, having proved his point!

John voyaged to Australia again, and the rest we heard was from his employers, saying that he and two other apprentices had gone ashore on a spree, had had a big feed, evidently on something poisonous, for all three got very ill and John died. As my Father remarked, the other apprentices were probably saved by having smaller appetites.

In 1891, Mr McGregor wrote thanking W. Q. O. for the very “beautiful, interesting and charming drawing; all I can say is that I appreciate most highly this mark of your regard.”

In 1891, a heavy weight, the bolt from the top of his big easel, fell on my Father’s head, bruising and cutting it rather badly. It seemed to cause a kind of congestion, and he very nearly had apoplexy; partly perhaps because he would not rest, but walked up and down the studio, and up and down. He was always restless when he was ill, and only stayed in bed if he could not get up.

In 1892 or 1893, my Father and Mother stayed a week-end at Lord Rookwood’s, but visitings by now were much less frequent than they used to be.

In May 1893 my Father, Mother and I went to picnic with the George Phillips’s. We went by launch from Walton to beyond Windsor—what a lovely old pile, with its perfect English surroundings. This was one of the views that made my Father say that England would become the playground of the world, would cease to be great and powerful, and would become, as it were, a park, a pleasure-ground for visitors, with its beautiful old palaces and houses as museums.

Luncheon was a grand affair served at tables, which did not quite suit our Bohemian tastes at a picnic. But otherwise the day was perfect. We landed again at Walton at sundown; there were carriages to meet the party, but my Father suggested a walk across the meadows. Of course, I jumped at the opportunity of his fascinating company all to myself, and we went off together after obtaining directions as to the path.

Picture us dawdling happily through the pretty meadows, discussing all we saw with entire sympathy. Then we reached a stile, where the path forked, and we suddenly discovered it was almost dark, we could neither of us remember our hosts’ directions; so we argued the matter, I favoured going to the right, my Father to the left; my Father said his bump of locality had never failed him; I said that I had inherited it and could find my way anywhere, quoting my capacity for finding my way in Savernake Forest, and the dense woods surrounding it, as a good example.

To which he replied that his experience had been longer than mine, which was unanswerable; almost a little breeze!

Of course, we went his way, a long long way, and then met another forked road, where my dear companion smilingly though reluctantly took my advice, and we at last reached our friend’s house, where we found all the guests gone, my Mother and our hosts in some anxiety. Supper had long been finished, and we just had time to assuage some of our pangs of hunger then rushed off to catch the last train back to town.

I enjoyed the long walk, but I was sorry for my Father, who, even then, was showing signs of failing health, though he himself did not know it and always wondered why he should get so tired.

Our host, by the way, was an old friend, son of a yet older one, Captain Phillips, one of the Royal Engineer balloonists at Chatham. He was afterwards transferred to the War Office as a particularly promising young man. He was with Buller in Natal in the Boer War, or rather over, for he occupied one of the two observation balloons. After the relief of Ladysmith, he took his balloon to British East Africa, where he was killed. He himself was English, but his Father was French, as also his wife, and he was exempt from fighting against France. His father died young, and W. Q. O. said of the son that he was “one of the rare specimens who had survived upbringing by a widow.”

In June 1896 we three went to the Heathcotes’ at Connington Castle, near Peterborough. My Father and Mr Heathcote played golf most of the time, and, no doubt, laughed at the Hampton Court tennis-markers’ lamentations; but on one of the three days we were there we drove over to Peterborough, about nine miles, to see the cathedral. I asked my Father if it were a very fine one, and he answered, “not half as fine as Winchester.” The country and the road were absolutely flat except for one steep hill leading up out of the fens into ordinary country.

In February 1897 Orchardson gave a short to-the-point address to the art students of the People’s Palace; “they were all most attentive, but, as usual, he was nervous, and he did not feel well” (E. O.’s diary).

I went with my parents to this prize-giving; I remember that the Bishop of Stepney, Dr Winnington Ingram (now Bishop of London), was on the platform and that I was introduced to him; I remember that my Father spoke well and clearly, improving as he went on, and in a manner to be “apprehended of the multitude,” but not one solitary word of that address can I remember, possibly because I found the Bishop’s face so extraordinarily interesting.

I have found, however, amongst my Father’s notebooks and scraps of paper (whereon he was wont to make notes in sketches or words), a series of notes of just such an address as would be suitable to this occasion:

Another sheet of notepaper, folded and torn and covered with faded scribbles in several directions, is labelled by my Mother: “Evidently one of his speeches to the students at the R.A., when he was a visitor.” I have pieced the notes together:

The rest of the speech was entirely extempore, and dealt chiefly with the right way to see.

Another fragment of a speech, but I do not know on what occasion it was delivered:

A letter that explains itself, from the man Orchardson always called the “Modern Benvenuto Cellini.”

My Father as a youth always intended to be a great traveller, but had to paint instead. It is a travelling family, my brothers and I are scattered over Africa, my Father’s brothers and sisters went to America, and we have relations in Australia. The brother (another Charlie) went twice round the round, then settled in U.S.A. as painter, lecturer, farmer and socialist; he was an unsuccessful candidate for the mayoralty of Chicago. He was unsuccessful in everything, and my Father helped him. The following draft letter from W. Q. O. explains itself:

“You clearly don’t understand the condition of things here; you speak of being introduced to the studios but that sort of thing does not go on here. Why, with the exception of two old fellow-students, one of whom is a very clever painter who has a difficulty in making both ends meet, I haven’t been in a studio for years. Of what good would my introduction be? People won’t buy pictures to please me, they only buy to make money. Lowering the price does not meet the difficulty. A. D. told me lately that at one time most pictures that had anything in them could be sold at a price of some sort; now they could not, and they never went to the studios because they could not buy. The cry to the unsuccessful here, and their name is legion, is that of course the R.A. and everyone else conspires to keep them down. There were this year over 14,000 works of art sent to the R.A., though everyone knows that not even 2000 can possibly be placed. Of course I have no right to object to your coming over, but knowing the condition of things, I would be wrong to encourage you to come. Looking from a distance it may seem hopeful, but after all it is a mirage, and a mirage is the worst place in the world to be stranded in, and the most hopeless.

“If you take my advice you won’t come.

Photo Watt & Son
STUDY FOR HER FIRST DANCE, 1884
By kind permission of James Orchar Art Gallery.

“You seem to speak as if society consisted of two classes, the vicious and the virtuous, and that wealth was the reward of the first and poverty that of the second. Does it not strike you that brains, capacity and conduct may have something to do with success in life and that incompetence—without going farther—[may] contribute towards failure even if backed by virtue, or even by vice? Though some clever people fail they do so from various causes. Now your troubles come not from want of power to manage your own affairs but possibly by your enthusiastic devotion to that of others.

“You may call it plain speaking—I don’t—but do you think that to overstate a case and call your opponent a scoundrel is plain speaking? It is not, it is special pleading and never commends itself to fair-minded men, and its natural result is to stir [up] antagonism. Now your object in advocating a cause should be to convince not to antagonize. This is the common fault of most socialists, they get so excited and incensed by the wrongs they try to remedy, that they overshoot their mark and belabour in their fury friend and foe alike.”

A Secretary to the First Lord of the Treasury wrote that Mr Balfour had just received a memorial bearing W. Q. O.’s signature amongst others recommending Mr X for a Civil List Pension . . . The point to be specially elucidated was whether Mr X could claim to be considered a first-rate artist in any sense, or rather an expert workman? and if the latter, is he quite exceptional?

Though Orchardson objected to being called a portrait painter he had been elected a member of the Society of Portrait Painters in 1897. Apparently he followed his usual habit of forgetting to write in answer.

W. Q. O. took up this election and thereafter exhibited regularly, I believe, though not always fresh work.

Copy of telegram:

Draft letter:

In 1895 Walter Armstrong wrote an excellent monograph on W. Q. O. for The Portfolio; in 1897, Stanley Little wrote another for The Art Journal. I have no record or recollection of my Father’s opinion of the former; of the latter, the following note appears to be part of a letter to the author:

After we left Westgate my Father found he had an intense desire to see his native country again and to hear the “kindly Scots tongue,” so he and my mother decided that the Highlands would be an ideal place to spend the summer holidays especially as holidaying and fishing could be combined. The last time they were in Scotland was in 1879 or ’80, when they visited the Stevensons at Loch Etive and the Robertsons at Muchall’s Castle, Kincardine; Charlie was with them then, but this time it was to be the whole family.

Lawers, Loch Tay, was finally fixed on and most of the little inn taken. After much unpractical puzzling over time-tables, Orchardson decided that the only way of being certain to arrive at his destination with both his family and his luggage, was to take a self-contained saloon carriage; which he did, the family travelling north at night in much comfort, at the end of July in 1891.

As my Father could only get to the North of Scotland by means of a saloon carriage that delivered him and his “impedimenta” at his destination, so in London he had taken a hansom cab in order to get anywhere; there were many places he described as “one of those places one gets to in a hansom.” Once he wished to go to a certain street and, having walked some way, found himself lost; so he hailed a cab and settled himself for a long drive. But the cabby turned the first corner and beamingly deposited his fare within a hundred yards. Yet my Father boasted of his bump of locality and laughed at his London wife for being unable to reach Knightsbridge from Victoria except via Oxford Circus!

To return to our Scottish holiday. I went to the Grays and joined the family later, my Father meeting me at Stirling; on my expressing my surprise and delight at his coming so far to meet me, he replied:

“I could not let anyone else show my little daughter her first sight of her native mountains.”

Although he was born in Edinburgh, he always felt himself a Highlander, as he was by descent—some ancestor had been in England, where the mispronouncing Sassenach changed the name to Orchardson, which the ancestor retained on returning to his native glen, as a distinction from the many other Urquharts.

The train took us to Killin and from there we went to Lawers in the little steamer that plies along the lake, a lovely place, a lovely day and a charming companion. On the way my Father told me of his first Loch-fishing adventure. He and Charlie were out fishing for the day with a native boatman—one of the usual charming-mannered Highlanders. Quite early in the day they “got into” a big fish. The line whirred out and was almost finished before Donald got the boat turned to follow the fish. Then began an exciting chase, W. Q. O. giving the boatman steering orders and Charlie’s internal spirits cutting such capers that he could hardly keep within the boat. All the afternoon the chase continued and Charlie and Donald relieved each other at the oars till at last the fish seemed to stick tight in some cranny, and no twist or turns or rings on the line could shift it. At ten at night, in pitch dark, my Father tied the line to a piece of wooden grating from the bottom of the boat and threw it overboard. Then they rowed home to Lawers, where they found a search party just setting out to find if they were drowned or not.

The following day at sunrise the enthusiastic fishermen went back to the loch, found the grating, pulled it into the boat, and wound up the slack of the line; but, alas! just as they thought the chase was beginning again, the line came away, loose. W. Q. O. maintained that the hero of this story was probably a salmo ferox, of which a few have been caught in Loch Tay, but as he never saw the fish either at the time or afterwards, he was never certain.

How many fishermen would have refrained from seeing that salmo ferox in after years? Even fishermen wonder.

My father was always honest in his fishing stories as in all other things, and could never understand other fishermen’s embroideries; so many odd things happened when fishing, he said, that it was quite unnecessary to invent.

“How is it that the fishing above us gets so many more fish than we do?” asked a man on the Dee, near Banchory, of his ghillie, who answered:

“They’re just bigger leears there than what we are here.”

We stayed at Lawers for six delightful weeks, my Father fishing every day and all day with one exception, when he accompanied us on a drive of thirty-six miles round Ben Lawers—up the pass of Glen Lyon (the home of the Campbells, who massacred the McGregors), where we saw “McGregor’s Leap,” a huge jump from one side of the river to the other which the McGregor took and so saved himself from the pursuing Campbell, who dared not take the leap; through the pastoral valley above the narrow pass and home across the west shoulder of the mountain, a wild wide pass, bare and rocky and boggy and heathery; beautiful in sunny weather, even cheerful, but on a stormy day, wonderful and forbidding. We went fishing there one day in the little tarn at the top of the pass, dark, peaty water overhung by dark lichen-covered rocks—my Father as well as I felt the awe and the wonder, although he was busy fishing if not catching fish.

Our friend, Mlle Céleste Léveillé, came all the way from Paris to join us on a visit, and delighted my Father with her French capacity for expression. She actually climbed the Ben “himself” with the younger members of the family. Imagine a French woman no longer either young or thin, wearing French boots and a long dress, climbing a rocky boggy mountain, a distance of four miles to the top. Her account of our adventures, given in a mixture of English and French, kept my Father laughing and entertained for a long time.

Another visitor was Sir Walter Gilbey who came over for a day and who was so enthusiastic over the delicious Highland beef and mutton that my Father laughingly remarked he hoped he would not suffer the same fate as “Cousin John” who, all his life, bitterly regretted that he had not had a “third helping of that saddle of mutton, you know!”

Our holiday ended with a fortnight at Inveroran near Loch Tulla in Argyleshire; we drove there from Lawers in a wagonette looking like a gipsy caravan, being hung round with fishing baskets, children’s toys and so on. My Father hoped to get some salmon in the Orchy which flows out of Loch Tulla, but he had no luck.

The day after our arrival my brother, a boy and complete novice, got a 16-pounder and two other men from the hotel got one each; after that nobody got anything except a couple of pike in the lake, which, of course, did not count, not being “fish.” The expression on a fisherman’s face when he catches a pike instead of a trout is—well, it varies according to the amount of “language” at his command. But my Father never used “swear words,” and was quite remarkably sweet-tempered, usually consoling himself with quaintly philosophical remarks. It is on record that he once said “damn” when he was practising golf by himself, and a little Aberdeen terrier knocked the ball off the tee every time he put it up. He was so ashamed at what he considered his loss of self-control that he stopped his game and went into the house to confess his weakness to his wife.

At the end of September my Mother took the family back to school and London (what a flat, dreary, dark and ugly place it is after the Highlands!) but my Father went to Mr. Gilbey’s at Coldstream.

Again those who do not like letters are advised to skim or skip.

Photo D. Croal Thomson, Esq.
MARIAGE DE CONVENANCE—AFTER, 1886
By kind permission of the Aberdeen Art Gallery.

Sligh was a boatman on the Tweed, celebrated—or perhaps notorious—for “character,” unfortunately it was of a disagreeable kind. One day he was rowing for his employer, a lady, who was fishing; she got into a “fish” (on the Tweed only a salmon is a fish) but owing to some mismanagement lost it. Sligh was in such a rage that he rowed straight to the shore, jumped out, pulled up the boat, and left Mrs (Huntly, I think) quite literally stranded.

If he could do that to his employer and a “leddy,” imagine what he was like to her guests! My Father, however, good-tempered, courteous, humorous, and strong-willed, contrived to get on very well with the old man after the first battle of wills in which old Sligh came off second best to his surprise.

My Father wound up his account of the old man by saying: “Sligh loves the river more than his wife and children or anything in the world; if he loses his job, and he deserves to, poor old chap, he will die.”

Some years later his temper grew more than unbearable and he at last lost his job. Within a year he was dead.

W. Q. O. spent the autumn and winter working hard as usual, but in the spring fishing interrupted, and after finishing his work for the R.A., leaving his wife to send it in and look after the family, he went off to Sutherlandshire where he had taken a salmon fishing with several old friends, Pettie, William Black and his lawyer brother-in-law Mr Morten, and Mr Orchar, an engineer, Provost of Broughty Ferry for many years, art lover, and incidentally, if I remember rightly, inventor of the gutty golf ball in place of the feather-filled leather ball of the old days. He gave W. Q. O. good advice as to how not to be cheated, and advised my Mother to take good care of her husband.

Photo T. & R. Annan
A TENDER CHORD, 1886
“Have I forgot the words?
Faith they are sadder than I thought.”
By kind permission of J. M. Robertson, Esq.

“Touching-up” days came, and with them W. Q. O., and a week later the private view to which my Father and Mother took me for the first time. It is an amusing function, all the R.A.’s and A.R.A.’s wives and daughters have new gowns and “bonnets,” as my Father called them, for the occasion, and there are (or were then) many celebrated people to be seen, besides most of one’s friends.

Photo T. & R. Annan
MASTER BABY, 1886
By kind permission of the Edinburgh National Gallery.

People are accused of going to see people and frocks and not pictures; but my Mother and I always went early and had a good view of the pictures before the crush. If we could get our artist to go with us, so much the better. On this occasion he gave us the benefit of his company and his criticisms, but unfortunately I only remember one of the latter.

We were looking at Leighton’s “And the Sea gave up the Dead which were in It,” which was causing much discussion.

“Is it really good?” said I in a doubtful voice.

“No,” said my Father, “Look, see! the people are all rising out of the water—and their clothes are dry! But, after all—well—that sea is dry, so perhaps it would be difficult for the clothes to be wet. No, it is not good; the man who is supposed to be supporting the two figures is not doing so, the muscles are flaccid instead of braced to meet the strain.”

Luncheon at Prince’s Restaurant with Mr (afterwards Sir, and Director of the Dublin Art Gallery) Walter Armstrong, this year, and at the Berkeley Hotel next year (or vice versa—it is immaterial) added to an entertaining day. They were both big parties, but I forget the hosts and only remember Monsieur Gauchez at the Berkeley, rather shocking and surprising everyone by criticizing Irving and Ellen Terry in his violent and emphatic way.

The R.A. banquet, opening day and the Greenwich dinner followed in quick succession, and then my parents went to France, taking me with them for the first time.

We stayed at the Grand Hotel, dined with our old friends the Jouanins, lunched with Monsieur Gauchez, I fancy; and, above all, went to the Salon. There we met Bouguereau, Meissonier (I think) and other painters, all full of compliments to the “English” painter, especially when they found he was Scotch.

There were two pictures of the year, De la Roche’s “Chevalier au Fleurs” and “Les Conquerants.” Orchardson was not enthusiastic over the former, it was “clever . . . but,” and as for the latter, he turned his back and took no further notice of it—he would never look at anything ugly. The shades of the conquerors—Napoleon, Cæsar, Alexander, and the lesser conquerors behind them, riding through the ranks of the dead, corpses lying in rows on either side—what a ghastly picture! Made worse by the horrible suggestion of truth in it. Yet it must have been clever to have made so great an impression on me that I am still shocked, stabbed by it after more than thirty years; I forget who painted it.

I whisperingly begged my Father to come away from the thing—he was talking and oblivious of horrors—and we went round the exhibition, but the only impression left is that of blood—every picture seemed to stream with it. And yet the French are considered a gay people.

I find the following note in my Mother’s diary:

On my asking my Father what he thought of French art, he said that the French were better draughtsmen than colourists, and that as a race they were extremely artistic, yet had never produced a First Old Master—a Raphael or a Titian.

From Paris we went on to Troyes to my Mother’s old friend, Mlle Léveillé, in whose charge my parents left me to learn French.

They stayed a couple of days and we went to see the sights—the house where the Treaty of Troyes was signed, the cathedral of no particular interest, a beautiful old church and of course the picture gallery of which my Father remarked that he had always wondered “where the vast canvases of the Salon disappear to, and now he knew, to a well deserved oblivion in the provincial galleries.”

This was one of the occasions that caused him to remark that most picture galleries “could be done at the rate of two miles per hour.”

Then I was left to France and homesickness plus an ancient brooch (which I still have), and they went home to painting, reading aloud, dining-out, and fishing.

In July my Uncle fetched me home from France, and as I curled up in an ecstasy of enjoyment (how lovely the Garden of England is after the cultivated desert between Paris and Calais!) I anticipated another pleasure—my Father at his easel and a talk on art.

But when in my usual hasty fashion I rushed to the studio, there was not a sign of art anywhere; the place was littered with fishing-tackle and my Father was busy “playing with his toys,” as my Mother always expressed it. In his own words he was “tidying” his tackle box, looking to his lines and gut, sorting and admiring flies and so on.

My Mother with the servants’ help packed the mundane necessities, but when it came to fishing boots and clothes my Father looked on critically, and between them they usually left some very important article behind; and my Mother always forgot the keys. So much so that after many trials and tribulations she never locked any boxes and left the keys permanently behind. Even her household keys were never to be found when wanted, and the dear Quiller made great jokes at his wife’s expense, saying that some day he would write a novel entitled Her Keys!

The following evening we entrained in our sleeping-saloon to the tune of (as it might be) “Have I forgot the keys? Faith, jaunts are harder than I thought they were.”

Oh! those night journeys! The blazing infernos of the Black Country, the peaceful meadows, the mysterious hills! With sleep between! And then the gay awakening in another land! My Father would put his head out of the window at the first stoppage and snuff the air, “Ah, how fresh!” and listen to the people speaking on the platform.

“The kindly Scots tongue! how good it is to hear it again!” And he would call a porter to make some small enquiry just for the pleasure of hearing his native tongue once more.

And then into the mountains!

Our saloon was shunted right down to the little pier near Killin, and my Mother went with it, but “the juveniles” decided to walk the pretty wooded mile from Killin village. My Father accounted himself a juvenile and came with us; he did not say much—I think he was “seeing visions.”

We did not wait for the “passenger only” boat that plies “D. V. weather permitting,” but took the little luggage steamer that plies “w’ether or no,” and after crossing the Loch several times, calling at the different villages, arrived at Fearnan, where we were welcomed in the usual pleasant Highland manner.

My Scotch husband tells me that there is no such thing as a “hamlet” in Scotland, but all the same Fearnan was a hamlet, about four miles east of Lawers, with a temperance cottage-hotel, a tiny general shop attached, and a few cottages.

It was low on the banks of the Loch, and not so bracing as Lawers, which is 300 feet above the level of the Loch; but it was more convenient for our fisher, who had found the climb to Lawers tiring after sitting cramped in a boat all day. I think that was the first sign of age noticeable in my Father, though he accounted himself a young man for years after that.

At Fearnan I usually played boatman; no easy job, for my brother in the bow invariably said I was too far away from the shore and my Father in the stern said I was too far in—the boat must be kept stern-on to the shore and just over the ledge that drops suddenly from the shallows to the deeps. Of course, when the trout are rising and hungry there are no troubles; it is only when there are no fish anywhere that fishermen are hard to please. Then the lines get tangled and the wind is too strong or not strong enough; and the water so glassy that it cannot disguise the fly, or so rough that no decent fish could possibly see a fly, and so on and so forth—for all of which the “boatman” gets the blame.

Sir Donald Currie (the shipowner) lived in Glen Lyon, the next valley to the Tay, and my parents lunched and dined there several times. Sir Donald lent us his steam launch on Loch Tay two or three times but my Father found the sport less exciting than from a rowing boat. W. Q. O. also had permission from Lord Breadalbane to fish in his private loch water and away down the Tay, where it flows out of the lake past the village of Kenmore and through the grounds of Breadalbane Castle. He got some good sport there, and enjoyed it more than the loch fishing, especially as it was very beautiful.

From Fearnan my Father and Mother went to visit Carnegie the millionaire at Loch Rannoch Lodge, where he and his young wife lived comparatively simply in spite of their enormous wealth.

One morning at breakfast, the conversation, so my Father told me afterwards, turned on Columbus and the egg. My Father remarked that it was quite unnecessary to flatten the end of the egg, as it was perfectly easy to balance. Mr Carnegie was sceptical, so my Father took up an egg and balanced it. “But that’s a boiled egg,” said the host and sent for a raw one, which my Father also balanced at the first attempt. Nobody was more surprised than W. Q. O. at having proved his argument so easily, but of course, he merely waved his hand in his foreign way and laughed his pleasant laugh. But Mr Carnegie was exceedingly cross.

I saw him once—a small, self-important man, light khaki-coloured, with a very wide mouth; he told my Father that he had made seven different fortunes but had lost them all except the last.

At the end of August my Father and I went off on a visiting expedition without my Mother, who stayed behind to look after the small children. Our journey to Muchalls Castle, Stonehaven, where we were to stay with the J. P. B. Robertsons, was not apparently a very satisfactory one; we had two changes, the trains were late and missed their connections, and my Father discovered too late that he had filled his luncheon flask with paraffin instead of whiskey and water!

At Muchalls I was relegated to the schoolroom, which was rather trying, schoolroom conversation being very dull after my witty well-read Father.

My Father was taken on several expeditions, a doubtful pleasure, as he did not like driving, but he enjoyed the interesting old houses he was taken to see.

From there we went on to stay with the Keillers at Ballater.

“Penitential pilgrimage” refers to travelling with his daughter instead of his wife.

The “penitential pilgrimage” ended we resumed our joyous Bohemian life at Fearnan.

We had a long spell of lovely weather, useless for fishing, so my Father was persuaded to take us all for a long drive to Kinloch Rannoch. The way lies across a bare moor over the shoulder of Schelalion down to Loch Tummel, thence up the valley of the River Tummel and into Kinloch Rannoch village. Each view as we came to it was more lovely than the last, and the accounts of the fishing on Loch Rannoch being as captivating as the views, our fisherman there and then decided to come there the following year.

He and his wife went there for the next spring fishing, staying at the Bunrannoch Hotel, and returning for work and the London season. Then the whole family went north again for the summer holidays. There were two hotels at Rannoch, neither of them fitted for a family of “young barbarians,” as our father called us, so we stayed at the blacksmith’s cottage, where the “guidwife” was engaged to do the cooking. But after a day of exceedingly bad cooking she threw up the job, which our very undomesticated Mother took over until our own holiday-making cook could arrive. She made a great success of it, however, especially her “roly-polies,” which were so good that her admiring husband “commanded” one daily!

The arrival of the real cook put an end to the pretty scenes in the little stone-flagged kitchen, where in the intervals of preparing for his fishing excursions my Father, after twenty years of married life, made as ardent love to his wife as after twenty days.

My Father and Charlie fished energetically but without much success, sometimes near the east end of the loch, sometimes further up, driving there and drifting back in the boat with the wind. Sunday as usual was a distressful day, no fishing being allowed, of course; my Father and Mother sometimes went out a drive to lunch or dine with Mr and Mrs Bunten at Dunalastair, and no doubt elsewhere too, though I forget. Sometimes he would accompany his family in their rambles, and even accepted an invitation to come to a cave and eat potatoes cooked in a gipsy fire, but the entertainment fell rather flat as he thought the amount of edible potato did not compare favourably with the amount of burnt. On the same occasion we took him to see a wasp’s nest, which he examined with much interest, and a curious tilted flat ledge of rock—my young brothers’ favourite playground. They gave a display of the game of sliding from top to bottom. My Father watched them, then said solemnly in a most matter of fact voice, but with a twinkle in his eye: “The constant work of patching breeches is now explained. I advised leather patches, but it would be best to slide on your own leather in future. That is the only cure; so don’t forget.”

Photo Henry Dixon & Son
THE FIRST CLOUD, 1887
“ ’Tis the little rift within the lute
That by and by doth make the music mute.”
By kind permission of the Tate Gallery.

To go back a little—after we left Fearnan, my Mother took the family to London, and my Father went to the Tweed again alone.

Autumn and winter were spent working as usual, then we went to Kinloch Rannoch as I said before, and as usual my Mother took the family home, and my Father went to the Tweed again.

My Father always used the word “presently” in the Shakespearean sense of now—at once.

Evidently my Mother joined my Father at Springhill for there are no more letters.

In 1893, I think, he took a fishing on the Kennet with Mr Basil Field, Mr Lloyd and Mr Halford—“fishing” friends; Mr Arthur Gilbey invited W. Q. O. to dinner “to meet Senior and Halford.” Headquarters were at the Mill House at Ramsbury, a bachelor establishment which my Mother soon remedied; an excellent example followed by Mrs Field.

I remember the place chiefly by a wonderful hedge of sweet peas and the tame trout that came to be fed every day in the mill pond. At least they were called “tame” and they certainly rose to the regular supply of food; but I cannot say that I think any trout looks sufficiently intellectual to be tamed; I fancy they came to the artificial food supply for the same reason that they went to the natural one—just hunger. But it would not do to say so to a fisherman.

There my Father spent many happy days; May-fly season, of course, being the gala time of the year. Then, besides the actual fishing, there were the hatcheries and stews to be looked at, kingfishers to be kept down—trout fishing must be extraordinarily fascinating for an artist to let such loveliness be killed for its sake. Keepers, poachers, weed and reed cutting all added to the interest.

My Mother generally accompanied her fisherman, but the following letters show that she sometimes “allowed” him go alone.

Curiously enough, as my Father grew older he grew short- instead of long-sighted. When he was about 50 he took to wearing glasses for all games and sports, and for work he had a curious pair made to look through at the distant model and under at the canvas.

He never wore glasses for reading even when quite old, though he was not short-sighted in his youth.

Mr Halford wrote in September ’94 thanking W. Q. O. for ordering some salmon flies for him and telling him about the dead trout he had left at Skelton’s.^[1] Both Mr Marryat and Mr Halford examined it, and found it was a female, old and in very bad condition. There was no mark of heron, scythe or any other injury to account for its death, but these cases are not uncommon and the fact of its being so thin is evidence of there being something wrong.

The following letters are not dated at all, but from the mention of a Council meeting at the R.A., probably Spring 1895.

My Father had a habit, well known to and much deplored by his wife and family, of stepping into a train after it had started: he often boasted that he had never missed a train.

Will you get me the sea antidote? Here is the dreadful name.

Granules Dorimetriques du Dr Burggrave Hyosciamene au ¼ de milligramme.

This is the whole prescription.

HER MOTHER’S VOICE, 1888
“Upon his widowed heart it falls
Echoing a hallowed time.”
By kind permission of the Tate Gallery, Berlin Photographic Society, and the British Art Co.

At the end of July my Father went to Ramsbury, the rest of us to Felixstowe.

My Mother had returned to town to meet my Father and then they came together to Felixstowe. We had a house just above the marshes and it was absolutely infested with virulent mosquitoes.

After two or three days my parents went to Ramsbury, leaving me in charge of my younger brothers and sister, with my great friend Katie Jones, who was governessing my little sister at that time.

But the place was awful and we begged to go to Ramsbury. Rooms were not available there, however, for so many of us, but at length my Mother found a farm at Axford, where we all settled down very comfortably for the rest of the holidays. Mr Pettie’s youngest son Norman visited us there, and “the boys” had a “glorious” time.

My Father spent most of his days fishing, but occasionally came with us picnicking on the Downs or in Savernake Forest, where he enjoyed himself just as much as his children, so long as the sun was too bright for the fish to be rising.

The Forest is many hundreds of years old, with long avenues of beeches and open glades, and short turf everywhere, with wild thyme amongst it. A lovely haunted place, and when we came to the great London road running right through it I, at least, felt that we should be lucky if we escaped a highwayman.

We spent two summer holidays there, and after that there were no more holidays en famille—Charlie married, myself grown up, Quentin learning engineering in Glasgow, and Hawley fascinating.

In 1896 my parents took Hawley House, spent much money in doing it up and building a big studio; we went there in ’97. It was advertised as being 17 miles from London, 2½ from Farningham Road Station and in the heart of the country. All quite true, but we afterwards found that it was only 1 mile from the little town of Dartford, a curious mixture of modern factories and ancient history. Wat Tyler’s Inn, whence he started for London, is still there, and, of course, the old church, and Watling Street is the High Street; the factories are chiefly paper and guncotton.

But the whole district is full of history. A Roman villa, Darenth Church, partly built of Roman bricks taken from the villa hundreds of years ago; and, of course, Queen Elizabeth is reported to have slept or refreshed herself in every sizable house. There was a mulberry tree in our garden whereunder she was reported to have breakfasted.

There was a good deal of oak panelling in the house, but nearly all of it had been spoiled by being painted “grained oak.” As the house was only leased, my Father contented himself with merely repainting it in white for the corridor, dark green for the dining-room, and brown for the hall, a square room with mullioned windows and an open fireplace. Gold canvas covered the upper part of the hall walls where there was no panelling; an old oak gate-legged table, two old oak chests, some Jacobean chairs, and Frans Hals etchings on the gold made a charming entrance.

Onslow Ford’s bronze bust of Pettie in one corner, and Hutchison’s terra-cotta of W. Q. O. in another were not quite in the “picture,” but were inconspicuous enough not to hurt one’s eyes. Hutchison was an old Edinburgh fellow-student, and the bust is of my Father as quite a young man—most extraordinarily handsome. Onslow Ford did a bust of W. Q. O. extremely good and exactly like, except for a slight narrowness which he altered, but not enough. It is now in the Tate Gallery. There is a story for which I cannot vouch that the two artists laughed so much that no work could be done until the wives, one at a time, came along and reduced them to order.

The open fireplace had been filled in with a mid-Victorian grate, but my Father had that taken out and we enjoyed a log fire on the hearth. Up the inside of the chimney was the entrance to the priest’s hiding hole, and in the old unpainted panelled room above was a long narrow cupboard in the wall, in that again a little door into the priest’s room, just big enough to put food through. A terrible ghost was said to live in the priest’s room and to emerge every night through the cupboard; however carefully the door was fastened it was always found open in the morning. At my Mother’s orders a modern locksmith put an end to the fable, unfortunately for romance but perhaps fortunately for young nerves.

The kitchen and servants’ hall were the remains of the banqueting hall, and the kitchen yards and outhouses also showed great age.

As one went from the hall along the corridor the house gradually grew more modern till one reached the studio. The billiard-table was brought from 13 Portland Place (of which the upper part was now let) and was put at the one end of it.

Upstairs everything was old except my parents’ summer bedroom; one went up and down steps in the most entertaining but inconvenient way imaginable, into all sorts of quaint little rooms—a “powdering closet,” a pump room, an “apple room.” Odd staircases led to the top storey—altogether a fascinating old place.

But it was the garden we all liked best—I loved it and so did my Father, and of all the garden “the wilderness” (a little wood with a wide moss-grown path through it) was the best. Besides being lovely and full of wild flowers and birds the entrance to a secret tunnel lay there, and close beside, in the stable yard, was a secret room stretching back under the garden lawn.

All the secret places, of course, added nothing to the beauty of the place, but they gave an air of mystery and historical romance pleasing to the mind steeped in history, such as my Father’s.

Beyond the wilderness were two big paddocks with some fine walnut and elm trees, and at the end rabbits enjoyed life and happiness in perfect security, for none of the family liked shooting, and only once or twice, I think, did any of them avail themselves of the shooting rights that went with the house. Another “right” that went with the house was the “columbarian right” to keep as many pigeons as the pigeon-house (built in 1556) would hold, that is to say eight hundred pairs. But as the neighbouring farmers had an equal right to grow crops, it follows that other people besides ourselves enjoyed pigeon pie. So from eighty (we never had eight hundred) pretty creatures we were soon reduced to half a dozen, and my Father then added the doves, which I tamed, and he subsequently and consequently painted.

On the other side of the house, across the road, lay the most important part of the whole little estate of fourteen acres—the river and the trout. My Father put in a good many fish and at first it seemed as though it would be a success; but the paper mills above would insist on emptying their poisonous refuse into the river—whether accidentally or of necessity I do not know—with the result that the fish died off, sometimes slowly and sometimes quickly, when we would find them floating topsy-turvy in batches; it depended upon the amount of poison.

Photo Leonard Card
THE YOUNG DUKE, 1889
By kind permission of the Lady Lever Art Gallery.

My Father and our neighbours, Colonel English and Mr. Oswald Magniac, and indeed most of the people who had fishing rights, formed a “Darenth Preservation Society,” but it did not seem to be much good, perhaps because the members were reluctant to go to law or perhaps because the paper mills—well, they were spoil-sports whatever the reason. However that may be, the sport was entirely spoilt, so my Father gave up trying to stock the Darenth and retained his share in the Kennet fishing for some time, and when that partnership was broken up, took a fishing on the Chess with Mr. St. Quintin.

Hawley was decidedly damp in the autumn owing to the luxuriant vegetation and the nearness to the Thames and Thames marshes. The Darenth, too, was canalised into many streams for the powder works, so that the machinery and the powder it made could be separated by water for safety.

The house itself was bone dry, all except the two modern rooms; the studio though modern was dry, but then it had two enormous fires, and two lamps were always kept burning under the big north window. Fog is very penetrating, however, and it was both frequent and dense. Then the Thames foghorns would start their melancholy moaning, three of them sounding a common chord and the rest very much out of tune.

But from January, when the first aconites came out, to October, when the last rose dropped, this corner of the Garden of England was indeed a garden.

Fruit blossom of all sorts, chestnuts, hawthorns, laburnums, rowan trees, a tulip tree, the little “carnation tree,” that I have spoken of elsewhere, and a most beautiful pink magnolia, besides wisteria, jasmine—but an old-fashioned catalogue is needed.

The meadows at the river were park-like, with hawthorns, beeches, elms, and a big perfect-shaped oak tree which was my Father’s favourite. A row of pollard willows along the bank of the river troubled the fisherman, but the artist would not have them cut down. When not fishing he used to stand on the little wooden bridge and watch for fish in the water below, of course with a rod in his hand.

For non-fishing days he made a few putting holes in the river meadows and practised an “approach” game of golf with much enjoyment. He tried to teach me, but was so insistent in exactness—“slow back, dinna press, keep your eye on the ball”—that my eyes hurt with staring at the (to me) silly ball and I gave it up as a bad job. He was more successful with the rest of the family.

Finding that the meadow grass grew too long for golf, he decided to get some sheep to graze it down, and sent our old coachman-gardener to get some, which he did, and brought home a small flock which he had obtained from his late employer. The sheep arrived lame and got worse—footrot and mouth disease. My Father was very angry, not with Kemp, who knew nothing about sheep, but with “the man who had taken advantage of his position to cheat an old employee of thirty years.”

My Father had his first game of golf at St. Andrews, and, according to himself, made a “fearful mess of it.”

My Father was one of the original members of the Sandwich Golf Club, though he did not learn the game till many years later. He told me he found the famous St. Andrews links very dull and easily played after Sandwich, with its “jungfrau” and bunkers to correspond.

About 1880 or 81 my Father and Mother drove over to Sandwich for the day, taking Charlie and me with them. We walked all over the little town, once a port, with our fascinating guide pointing out and explaining everything of interest. He taught us to wonder at the sand-dunes and what connection they might have with the Goodwin Sands; to think of the terrible wrecks there; and cheered us with the thought of the lifeboatmen and the splendid courage that took them to the quicksands whatever storm might be raging.

It was a delicious day, all sunshine and freshness, and we walked across the dunes, now the golf links, down to the sea, and gathered shells and saw their beauty through his eyes and mind. Sandwich takes my memory to Canterbury, where my parents went one year for the Cricket Week and saw Grace play; but the celebrated W. G. was bowled first ball and everybody was disappointed, especially my Mother, who always took things very much to heart. So my Father consoled her by saying, “But you have seen much more than you came to see. It is a common thing to see Grace make runs, but to see him out for a duck and bowled first ball to boot is an experience not likely to be repeated.”

“But all the same!” said my Mother.

They were staying with the Weigalls, I think, and Judge Hughes (“Tom Brown”) was a fellow guest. The house was a wandering one, and my Father’s bump of locality failed him frequently and once too often; for one night on going into his bedroom, as he supposed, he found someone else’s wife undressing before the fire—undressing is the wrong tense! Being quick in his movements he got out before being recognized, though he had time to recognize the lady, whose name, however, shall remain hidden.

Another woman in this same house party, very plain, not to say ugly, caused my Father and Mother much amusement; she always chose her seat in such a position that she could see into a mirror, and she preened herself and admired the reflection the whole time she was talking. Her name, too, may remain unknown.

At this same period of life my people stayed with Sidney Cooper and his wife somewhere near Canterbury. One morning coming down to breakfast W. Q. O. met Sidney Cooper coming in with a canvas under each arm. The old painter showed off his work to the young one and explained with pride that he painted two pictures before breakfast every morning in his life.

As my Father said when he told me:

“No wonder his pictures are all alike and all equally bad; he has perfected his imperfections.”

Another memory of these old days: my parents went to Minster, the oldest church in England, and Orchardson was much annoyed at the vandalism that had stripped the walls of their plaster and paintings and reduced them to bare stone—“stripping off history,” he said, “artistically ignorant parsons making ‘improvements’—they have a craze for it.”

An excitable friend of ours visited Minster with a party; at leaving time she was not to be found, but was at last discovered crouching beside an old tomb, sobbing bitterly. Everybody was distressed and inquired anxiously what was the matter. Sobbingly she said:

“I have just found my great-grandmother’s tomb. I never saw her but——” Sobs, which lasted till she reached home, choked further utterance.

Golf in the meadows at Hawley has led me somewhat astray, perhaps a talk in our boat there suggested these old memories. We had a collapsible Berthon boat which we paddled like a canoe—the river was too narrow for oars, besides oars make one sit backwards and one cannot see the different beauties as they come into view round the twists and turns of a river. This boat provided my best amusement, and happy were the rare days when “Titumy” came with me, but, alas! as he grew delicate they grew even fewer and then ceased.

In late summer and autumn my Father and Mother and I went a round of visits in Scotland, then came to Hawley, which now became “home,” the upper part of 13 Portland Place being let. Occasionally I went to Scotland alone, or stayed on alone; a letter to me from my Father and a few extracts from my Mother’s letters to me will give some idea of their life à deux, still a honeymoon life.

[E. O.’s letters]:

That the Darenth fishing was no great success is shown by the fact that he kept on the Kennet fishing at Ramsbury, and not infrequently went dry-fly fishing visits as well as the visits in Scotland for wet-fly and salmon fishing.

A few letters to my Mother will tell of W. Q. O.’s health and spirits; “end of century” may be the general date:

There are two little jokes in these letters. Whenever anyone did anything silly or stupid my Father always quoted Carlyle’s description of the population of England, “forty millions, mostly fools.”

Photo T. & R. Annan
“IF MUSIC BE THE FOOD OF LOVE, PLAY ON.”
1890
By kind permission of Mrs. P. M. Inglis.

The “valet” was his loving name for his wife, pointing out and emphasizing the way she waited on him hand and foot, helping him to dress, and even changing his socks for him three times a day.

In September 1889 my brother Ian and I were sent to Bavaria for educational purposes, and almost immediately my Father and Mother went off to Scotland, travelling from Euston by the day train straight through to Struan, with “Grannie,” Charlie and Gordon to see them off.

My Father was always very lively at a station; he “saw to” his luggage with much energy, but seldom arrived with anything but a small fishing bag, which he always kept in view, to amuse himself with its contents, his toys, on the way—“In that toy to me what joy”—his wife’s “bonnets” were of no account. This view having been corrected, he sometimes, though seldom, managed to arrive with the “bonnets” as well as the fishing tackle, but nothing else. Asked why he did not leave the luggage to his wife he said she was worse than himself—but that was a fable.

My Father wrote to us occasionally and my Mother so constantly that her letters almost form a diary. As my Father studied the Boer War like an old soldier and with the skill of one, so his military friends said, I give his letters in full, and extracts from my Mother’s in diary form:

Photo Henry Dixon & Son
ON THE NORTH FORELAND, 1890
By kind permission of the Royal Academy and the Berlin Photographic Society.

[E. O.’s letters continued]:

Abbey wrote to W. Q. O. to ask him to use his influence with McCulloch to get him to lend “Richard of Gloucester and the Lady Anne” for the Paris Exhibition. McCulloch had refused as he thought that Paris was not at all necessary to an artist, but “I learn that you are of another way of thinking, and I am told you have great influence over him.”

W. Q. O. did not think it necessary to study in Paris, but he exhibited there very frequently, in fact, whenever he was asked.

My Father evidently used his good offices, for Abbey wrote again:

[E. O.’s letters again]:

Photo Henry Dixon & Son
AN ENIGMA, 1891
By kind permission of J. M. Fraser, Esq. (owner) and the French Gallery.

SIR WALTER GILBEY, Bart., 1891
By kind permission of Sir Walter Gilbey, Bart.

As my Father remarks in one of his Amesbury letters, “Hilda has given an account of our adventures from her own point of view—not bad,” so I find I must continue to do so from lack of material to do otherwise; and can only hope it may continue to be “not bad.”

Country-house visiting is delightful and full of variety owing to the difference of scene, of people and manners and modes. In the telling, however, it is apt to become monotonous because of the impossibility of describing those differences in a reasonable space; each house would take a chapter to itself.

My Father seldom dated his letters and my memory for dates is inherited from my Mother’s memory—or lack of it—for keys. Consequently I cannot “place” this St. Fillan’s letter quite certainly. We were on our way back from one of our family holidays in Scotland, probably from Fearnan in 1894. My Father and I got out of the train at Stratheyre in the evening, leaving my Mother and Charlie to escort the rest of the family back to school—Charlie to an art school—Academy schools I think at that time.

At Stratheyre station we found the nearest hotel was three or four miles away and there was no trap of any sort to be had. It was dark and raining, we did not know the way, and as we had a considerable pile of luggage, walking was out of the question. After much friendly discussion a station loafer offered to fetch a cab out of apparently nowhere, and after a while produced a ramshackle wagonette. We waterproofed ourselves, loaded up and drove off in the pitch darkness. After a seemingly long drive, warm, in spite of the rain, we arrived safely at the Stratheyre Hotel, the wagonette, to our surprise, not having broken down.

The following morning we drove to St. Fillan’s Hotel, ten or twelve miles, a most lovely drive, which I enjoyed and my Father pretended to more than he really did—he disliked driving and the wagonette was uncomfortable. Besides, he was missing his wife, and a daughter’s attentions, however well meant and kindly received, were by no means the same thing.

We met my Mother at Perth, and then went on to the Tullis’s near Forfar, where my Father played golf and had a couple of days’ fishing on the Esk. From there they went North to Aberdeen, and thence up the valley of Dee to Finzean, the highland home of Dr Farquharson, M.P., his brother the painter, his sister-in-law and her sister. In 1896 we all three went.

It is an old Scottish house with ancient yew hedges, right amongst the hills in the Farquharson country and altogether Highland; tartan curtains and stair-carpets, kilted hosts and a piper to wake one up in the morning by marching round and round the house playing lively Highland pibrochs—a delightful awakening. At dinner the piper came up the stairs playing, marched round the drawing-room—playing—while our host marshalled his guests; then, still playing, he marched downstairs followed by the dinner procession headed by our host; into the dining-room he marched, round and round and still playing, while people sought their places. When everyone was seated he marched round twice more and then retired, and as the pipes receded they grew beautiful, giving forth music. Conversation was once more resumed with perhaps an added zest and liveliness from having been completely overpowered by this very Highland entertainment.

My Mother and I were pleased, and my Father not displeased, that we possessed frocks, cloaks and rugs of our own Urquhart tartan, a very pretty one, dark green and dark blue check, with a red and double white line overcheck; he was much interested in the double white line as being the ancient correct pattern, not always used.

W. Q. O. dined with Dr Farquharson at the House of Commons a good many times, but of these dinners I have no record except that he enjoyed them; we all went to tea and strawberries on the Terrace. My parents dined with Mr Speaker Gully and attended a reception once.

A fellow guest at “Finzean” was Lord (then Mr) Bryce, a nice old man, but not apparently clever, engrossed, I suppose, in his thoughts.

Before going to Finzean we went to the Henri Rivières, London friends, who had taken “Inchmarlo,” near Banchory, for the fishing. Mrs Rivière was (and is) a niece of Sir Walter Gilbey, a lively, pretty woman. Mr Rivière was a Mauritius Frenchman descended from one of Napoleon’s generals, and was quite charming. He was a very keen salmon fisher, and never to be found anywhere but at the river. On our arrival my Father would go at once down to the Dee to greet him and “talk fish.” The non-fishers saw Mr Rivière at breakfast and dinner, but at no other time unless one went down to the river. W. Q. O.’s portrait of him is almost living.

“Inchmarlo” belonged to the Davidsons, of whom one was called “Flying George” with great derision—he was trying to invent a flying machine, and quite sure that someone would succeed even if he did not. My Father’s criticism of the idea was that no heavier-than-air machine could fly until a light but very powerful engine was invented.

The Rivières had “Inchmarlo” for some fishing years, then took “Murthly,” Millais’ old Tay fishing (where I was not invited, the house being small), and after that “Mountblairy” on the Deveron, which is like a South of England river, and finally settled at Park, on the Dee.

For years we visited these nice friends early every autumn. Mr Rivière had a little joke with me every year on our arrival asking after a non-existent “Mr Hilda,” and when at last I got engaged, shouted from the middle of the river to the bank, where my Father and I had gone to greet him, “Congratulations! When is Mr Hilda coming home?”

Deeside provided many delightful days, fishing the principal amusement—at Banchory Devenick with the Stewarts and at other places, and on the Don at Mr White’s and at Kildrummie. Mr White’s house was just above the Brig o’ Balgownie, the bridge Byron was afraid of crossing on horseback for fear of the old rhyme about the bridge falling if an only son on an only foal ever crossed it coming true; it crosses the river in a single span, a most beautiful arch that gave W. Q. O. almost as much pleasure as the fishing.

Another interesting place was Drum, where the present-day Irvines showed us the title-deed to the estate given to their ancestor by Robert Bruce—a carved ivory horn, which they kept in a glass case in the hall. The family crest is a holly tree, which still grows beside the ancient keep, whose walls are twelve feet thick.

Aberdeen town was just enjoying an artistic awakening, thanks in a great measure to the late Mr McDonald and to Mr (afterwards Sir James) Murray; and W. Q. O. was made much of whenever he passed through, and of course his wife and daughter shared in the pleasant times. The first time he stayed at Banchory House was when he was painting Sir David Stewart’s portrait; he started it there but did most of it in London, and being unable to get the red robes as often as he wanted them sent me out to get patterns of red stuff to make one. What a hunt I had! There seemed to be hardly any red stuff to be had and there was nothing satisfactory at all, so our artist had to put up with a very inferior red, and then worried himself that he was painting a bad red in the picture—quite unnecessarily, for it proved very beautiful, and the picture had a great success in Paris as well as in London.

The Nesses were London Scottish friends with whom we stayed yearly, one year at Glenbruach in the Trossachs, a visit made memorable to me because on Sunday everybody went to church except my Father and I, and we went a walk together to Loch Katrine. The day was lovely, the scene was perfect and we said in one breath, “This is God’s church,” and then walked silently.

This was in 1897; my Mother remained at Hawley to settle the young members of the family, and my Father and I travelled together, stopping the night in Glasgow to see my brother Quentin, who was learning engineering there. We then came on to Callender, where the Nesses met us, and all in the hurry and excitement my Father gave directions for our luggage to come by coach, and that was the last we saw of it for some days; it went to Loch Lomond, I believe. A house-party and no clothes but one’s travelling garments! However, I was quite used to it, and though I did not really mind, thought it would be more convenient if I looked after the luggage myself. My parents were rather doubtful, but I pointed out that I could not lose it more often than they did. They laughed and agreed; and for the future when our hosts remarked as usual on our arrival “We suppose you haven’t any luggage with you,” we could point to it triumphantly and say, “It is here”; and everybody laughed—a perpetual joke.

Photo The French Gallery
SAINT HELENA, 1816, 1894.
Napoleon dictating the Account of his Campaigns to Comte de Las Casas.
By kind permission of the Lady Lever Art Gallery.

My Mother was driving herself, and the pony shied up a bank in a lane half a mile or less from home; she walked three miles in the wrong direction with Sheila, reached a village, got a cab and drove home. She was much chaffed by her family over this “adventure.”

My Mother duly came, bringing Quentin with her from Glasgow, and my Father now began to enjoy himself. I once told them that they were like a pair of lost ghosts when separated, and they were rather flattered than otherwise—I don’t know which was the worse ghost; their inseparability was recognized and provided for by all our friends.

From the Nesses we three went to Deeside again, Quentin returning to Glasgow.

The following year Mr Ness took Lethan, about six miles inland from Elgin, in the strange warm belt near the Moray Firth. It was hilly but not mountainous, and the house was in the middle of a dense wood, mostly great beeches, full of owls, that spent the night screaming and hooting in a most eerie way.

My Father had two days’ salmon fishing on the upper waters of the Spey, but it was a long way in those motorless days, and he mostly contented himself with golf and dawdling.

One day he came for a stroll with me through the woods and we came to an avenue of ancient yews, unharmed by storms in that sheltered spot, and of a perfect shape.

“Now I know,” exclaimed my Father, “where the Gothic architects got their fluted columns and groined roofs.”

For the trunks of the yews were fluted and their arching branches met overhead making a groined roof, and we walked in the aisle of a natural cathedral. We said some word of The Great Architect, and then strolled up and down the cathedral aisle “not built with hands” in silence and complete sympathy. No, not quite complete—I was content with his company but he was incomplete without his wife’s, though he could “thole” his daughter’s very sweetly.

A most sad incident occurred during this visit. When we arrived, a girl, whom we had met at Glenbruach, was lying ill of gastric catarrh, nothing serious apparently; but she grew worse, her Father was sent for and an Edinburgh specialist, but nothing could be done, and she died. Kind Mrs Ness would not let her guests go, hotels were full and next visits not yet due; she contrived to keep her guests amused and happy, and on the day of the funeral sent all the young ones and her two sons to the Inverness Highland games.

The following year we found the Nesses permanently settled at Braco Castle, a fine place south of the Grampians and north of the Ochill Hills, a moor on one side and cultivated fields on the other. We visited them there for years, always with great pleasure, usually meeting the same people—Colonel Browne (the son-in-law), who was in the Burma campaign, and wrote an interesting book on it, Walter Horsley, son of the R.A., the Whitelegge’s [Mrs (now Lady) Whitelegge was Horsley’s daughter], our old friends the MacWhirters, the Colin Hunters, the Lawson Waltons, and one of Peter Graham’s many musical daughters, Annie, who could play the violin well enough for even that critical man my Father to listen to with pleasure; she sends me the following little anecdote which I had forgotten.

At dinner one evening the conversation turned upon a man who had been unjustly condemned to a long period of imprisonment of which he had undergone two years before his innocence was discovered. Mrs Ness was very indignant and repeated, “Yet he was innocent” so many times that Mr Ness at last asked, “Well, would you rather he had been guilty?”

“Oh no!” she replied, “for though he was guilty he would have a good conscience, don’t you think so?” she added, turning to Mr Orchardson.

“Yes,” was the reply, “he had a good conscience and he had what was even more—a grievance.”

He then inveighed, as he often did, against the injustice of a “free pardon” to an innocent person, who had done nothing to be pardoned. To point out that it was only an expression, incorrect no doubt, but understood by everyone, did not at all allay his indignation, rather whetted it.

The idea that a grievance provided a pleasant occupation to otherwise occupationless people was a familiar one to his family; he often remarked, “A man with a grievance is a happy man,” and it was always apropos and quaintly humorous.

[Draft of part of a letter to Mr Ness]:

My Father and Mother did not like very long journeys so we nearly always stayed a night in Glasgow, chosen as a stopping-place at first because Quentin was working there and, later, my youngest brother, Gordon, as well. Aberdeen was another stopping-place for a similar reason, another son, Ian, was there at the University.

In 1901 we stayed two or three days in Glasgow for the Exhibition, which was most interesting, but not very different from other exhibitions. I remember it chiefly for the amount of friends we met there, including that old friend of my Father’s, Mrs Ford, “Chattie” of the old Edinburgh days, whom he had not met since the afternoon she spent with him in St. John’s Wood Road. I well remember my Father’s delighted greeting, he had a specially soft corner for old friends.

Another time we went to the launch of the Alnwick Castle at Govan Yard in September 1901; Messrs. Beardmore sent the invitation through Sir Donald Currie. It was a pouring wet day and we drove in a closed cab through miles of deserted, sloshy, slummy streets; on arrival we were taken to the platform built below the bow of the ship and matters were explained to the little crowd assembled there, partly sheltered by umbrellas.

I remember in particular the piles of huge chains coiled in an orderly manner to regulate the speed of the ship as she went down the slipway. We were told that if the weight of the chains were miscalculated, or the coiling anything but perfect the launch would be a fiasco owing to the narrowness of the Clyde here—the engineer responsible was wandering about in a very anxious frame of mind.

When the explanations were finished I left my Father’s side where I had been listening (his questions were always intelligent whatever the subject and elicited interesting answers) and went to the edge of the platform. The signal was given, the few remaining props were knocked away by workmen far below, the champagne bottle swung at the end of its long ribbons just missing my head (I heard a shout) and broke on the bow; the ship began to move, the stays at the stern were broken like matchwood, and the Alnwick Castle slid into the Clyde, stopping just before reaching the opposite shore—the chains had done their work well and exactly, and the engineer once more breathed freely.

I turned to my Father, exclaiming, “Wasn’t that ripping, Titumy!” but he was as white as a sheet. “You were nearly killed, Lassie—that bottle—and I couldn’t reach you, and you took no notice of my warning shout.”

Luncheon and speeches followed in the designing loft; a most entertaining day.

One year my parents went to Glenapp Castle, near Ballantrae, from Braco. They stopped in Glasgow as usual en route and while there went, at the invitation of Mr Tullis, I think, to inspect the Municipal Buildings. My Father had a bad cold at the time so he did not quite enjoy wandering about a big draughty building. If I remember rightly, he thought the marble staircase the best part of the building.

Someone incautiously asked him what he thought of Sir George Reid’s resignation of the Presidency of the R.S.A., a matter that was being hotly argued at the time. My Father replied that as he did not know “all the facts he would not hazard an opinion.”

I often stayed with the Reids, and knowing my Father’s disapproval of the resignation I asked Sir George about it, who said that the constant fights at the Council meetings made his position impossible. Sir George was a quiet, kindly man with a deep sense of right and wrong, but far too gentle to rule what was evidently an obstreperous crowd.

I explained this to my Father, who thereupon agreed that Sir George was probably justified in his apparently strange action.

The writing in this last letter is very shaky, as always when my Father was suffering from tic douloureux; he always had it in the left shoulder, and once when he was young he drew a red-hot poker across the place to ease the pain. He also tried an injection of opium once, but the after effects were so much worse than the tic that he was convinced that the doctor had given him an overdose. In any case, he never tried either of these remedies twice, but suffered the pain with fortitude. I have seen him pacing up and down, restlessly “to and froing” with great drops of perspiration streaming down his face. But if one spoke to him he always answered in his usual gentle voice and manner, and I never saw him in any way out of temper or impatient.

We met my Mother at Aberdeen and stayed with the Reids at their cottage—“St. Luke’s”—just outside the town. Sir George had built himself a studio there, and Lady Reid had taken charge of the garden. As the whole place was sheltered from the north and east winds by a high wooded bank and open to the south it was a delightful little sun trap, often quite warm when the rest of Aberdeen was shivering in a bitter north-easter. The house itself was covered with and warmed by a dense mass of ivy about two feet thick which was always dry inside next the walls whatever the weather might be like.

Golf at Balgownie links and a day’s fishing on the Dee were my Father’s amusements, besides a dinner or two to which he went with his wife. But his chief joy was being read to by his sweetheart and making love to her again—after a week’s separation. And how many years of married life?

One year we went to the Fairfax Rhodes’, who had a place near Kirriemuir. My Father went fishing in the Esk and I went over to see Barrie’s birthplace one day. I bought some trifle in a shop to have the opportunity of asking Kirriemuir’s opinion of him.

“I was at school wi’ James Barrie,” the shopman replied, “and we didna think muckle o’ him then; and noo he writes what a’body kens, an’ we still think little o’ him.”

An amusing case of a prophet not being honoured in his own country!

We stayed several times with the Orchars at Broughty Ferry (near Dundee, of which Mr. Orchar was provost for nine years or so). W. Q. O. went there nearly always when he was painting a Dundee portrait, but at times stayed with the people he was painting.

Amongst other people and places my parents visited were the Marquis of Huntly in 1896, where the hostess, the Marchioness, was served before her smaller-titled and titleless guests; Mr (now Sir) James Murray, M.P., Sir John Leng near Dundee, Glenapp Castle near Ballantrae, whose owner’s name escapes me, and others that I may or may not have heard of—the “key” memory again! At any rate, no record remains; as my parents were together my Father wrote no letters and my Mother’s letters were all destroyed naturally enough, besides, they gave no descriptions of anything or anybody. They went to Edinburgh once to an hotel, I think, and then once to the Reids at their Edinburgh house. Sir George had a great fund of quiet humour and, like most Scotch people, could tell a good story; Lady Reid was, if possible, even nicer than her husband, though that would be difficult, and spent much of her time reading aloud to him. As they knew most of the “big-wigs” of Edinburgh, as I irreverently called them, a stay at their house was extremely interesting.

Photo T. & R. Annan
MISS ORCHARDSON, 1894

From the Reids my parents went to Brownrigg near North Berwick, the home of my old friends, and at that time future “in laws,” the Grays. My parents already knew the sisters, one of whom had been my schoolfellow. My engagement dates this visit 1904.

Conversation turned on old Edinburgh days; another Gray, an uncle, at Cramond Brig, was mentioned, and it turned out that once W. Q. O. and one of his sisters were caught in a storm there as boy and girl and took refuge at a farm-house near by—the Grays. So small is Scotland.

At the end of April my parents came home from Aboyne and Ian and I came home from Germany, where we had had a “rough passage” owing to the Boer War. What a glorious homecoming that was! To beautiful friendly England, to so “lovely” a Father and so dear a “little” Mother.

We went to the Private View a day or two later and I was so happy that I forgot to be shy and have now forgotten all about the pictures except that somehow I was disappointed in the “Four Generations.” I did not analyse the disappointment at the time, but looking back on it, fancy it must have been caused partly by the alteration in the Prince of Wales’s head and partly by the lighting.

After the R.A. banquet, where the usual interesting speeches were tinged with the sadness of the Boer War, and the opening day, my parents decided to go to North Wales, France not being at all friendly to English people.

We, the three of us, went first to Lake Vyrnwy. The train passed through gloomy Birmingham, where we were joined by Mr Charles Winn, who had suggested the trip, an old friend of many artists, Pettie included, a brass founder, and a grower of orchids and consequent friend of Joseph Chamberlain. The barrage forming the lake was interesting but the fishing disappointing, the few fish my Father caught having big heads and small bodies, a sign of starvation. An examination of the lake soon showed the reason why; the banks were entirely lined with big stones so that very little vegetation or animal life could flourish there, and trout do not as a rule feed in deep water.

A road encircled this artificial lake, and one day we drove round, about twelve miles. It was very pretty with rhododendrons and azaleas in full flower all the way, and Welsh mutton walking about with proper little woolly baa-lambs that only needed a green wooden stand with wheels to be ready for presentation to a proper little baby; hitherto we had supposed toy lambs to be unlike any lamb ever created, but now we knew better; they were the prettiest little things.

From Lake Vyrnwy we went a visit to the Vale of Llangollen to friends of Mr Winn, whose pottery we examined with much interest, the strangest thing being the way tiles are made; various coloured clays are packed in patterns into moulds and after being fired come out entirely different colours.

Another pretty drive and some more toy lambs decided us that N. Wales was pretty but very tame and gentle after the beautiful wild Scottish Highlands, where my Father loved too to hear again the kindly Scots tongue—he always spoke with a slight accent himself. What is it, I wonder, that makes a Scot’s voice sound so friendly?

On our return to Hawley my Father took up his life of work and fishing and golf, with a season ticket to London.

The neuritis in his left arm which had started in 1898 was gradually disappearing, he seldom wore a sling now, and was once more able to carry his palette, though he had to have a very light one. While his arm was very bad he had propped his palette on a music-stand, which he found very inconvenient, especially while he was doing the “Four Generations.” So big a picture requires to be viewed at a distance constantly, and the stationary palette involved much extra walking, for which he was totally unfitted. Constant pain and lack of sleep caused other troubles—indigestion and fainting attacks—and the wonder is that the picture was ever finished. By now my Father had to admit that he was delicate, though he would by no means admit to being old. In a note-book is the following reflections without any connection with anything else:

As if to prove himself young he wrote a rhyme on the marriage of a Mr Day to a Miss Week about this time:

And then:

He always kept going till he could no longer stand, and I have often seen him trying to play golf when he was so weak that his legs were visibly shaking under him—a triumph of mind over matter. But his hands, though he could sometimes hardly hold a pen, never shook with a brush in them, an even greater triumph in its results.

When the Queen died in January 1901 we were affected in the same way as the rest of the country. My Father, indeed, was more affected than most people, for he had recently seen the Royal Family rather intimately and, to his surprise, had liked them; a painter must needs be a very keen observer of character. The Prince of Wales, King Edward VII, he found to be a very clever, well-read man, though not intellectual, and brimful of knowledge of the world. Most people were very doubtful as to what sort of King he would make, but my Father predicted that he would make an excellent one, in which he proved correct, for after two or three years people began to say that Queen Victoria had lived ten years too long.

In April, having sent five works to the R.A., my Father went off with his wife to recruit in the South of France, stopping, of course, both going and coming, in Paris for the general joyous entertainment it afforded them and for the Salon, Monsieur Gauchez and the Jouanins.

The recent honour, in 1901, conferred on Orchardson made another reason for staying in Paris. Monsieur Gauchez had telegraphed first and then written to announce it. My Father replied as follows—I notice he wrote very foreign letters when writing to foreigners:

At the Gare de Lyons a curious little incident occurred. With much difficulty they secured a growling porter—“à bas les Anglais”—but not a cab would take them; my Mother tried blarney in her pretty French without effect, and then my Father had what can only be described as a brain wave.

“Anglais!” he exclaimed, “no, non, Ecossais!”

At once the cabby climbed down off his box, opened the door of his cab with a great flourish and said:

“Entrez madame! Entrez monsieur! A bas les Anglais—mais vive les Ecossais!”

After that, whenever my Father forgot to wear his ribbon of the Légion d’Honneur he had merely to say “Ecossais” to receive almost as much attention as the ribbon procured.

From Paris they went on to Monte Carlo, which they did not like, so went to Hyères. It will be noticed in the two following letters that my Father, the optimist, says his arm is better, while his wife says it is bad—temporarily let us hope.

[E. O.’s letter—extracts]:

In a letter to my Mother, Charlie wrote:

A young painter always has a hard struggle to make ends meet and my Father having helped Charlie to a partnership in St. John’s Wood Art Schools, also put work in his way whenever possible.

[Dictated letter]:

On Charlie becoming a partner in the St. John’s Wood Art School, W. Q. O. presented a yearly medal—the chief prize of the school; Gilbert Bayes designed it.

Photo T. & R. Annan
THE RIVALS (Rivalry), 1895
By kind permission of Lord Invernairn.

[Draft letter]:

Other sons had to be started in the world, too, an expensive and difficult business.

This is probably to Sir Edward Carbutt, but it did not procure a job for Quentin (“the works were full”), who finally colonized, a family “failing”; two other younger brothers have also colonized since then (or should one say Dominionized now?) as well as myself.

In the Spring of 1904 I underwent a small operation; I went to a private hospital and my Mother remained in London to be near me, which caused the following letter:

My Father had a very great belief in the innate beauty and honour of human nature; no amount of experience ever destroyed it, and a letter he received in April 1904 must have greatly enhanced it.

It appeared that at the death of his correspondent’s father, my Grandfather was called on to pay £40 (presumably a loan or bill) which he could ill afford, but he did so without complaining and only regretting the loss of his friend. Now the daughter sent a cheque for £80, “including a little interest,” and added that she had had much hesitation in troubling him and begging to be pardoned for so doing.

My Father, much touched, replied as follows:

Mrs. G. replied that she appreciated the first thought, but would like to send the cheque to “Mary Eliza or his brother Charlie”; and added: “I remember being told by our lawyer how much he admired the gracious way your Father met the claim and made the sacrifice.”

Three loving letters; he lived for Love and Art, and Love came first.

I once had an argument with my Father on the subject of being missed. I maintained that I wished not to be missed, or at least I thought one ought to wish so, otherwise one was wishing for people to suffer. But he said that that was such an unnatural wish that it argued selfishness.

Dinner time was conversation time, especially when my Father and Mother and I were alone, as often happened during these years at Hawley; and particularly when I had just come back from a long absence, had seldom been able to get hold of a newspaper and was tired of trivial conversation. Then I would turn on the tap, as it were, of questions and suggestions with wonderful results. If only I had written them down at the time!

However, with the aid of memory refreshed by newspaper articles, magazine interviews,^[1] and the fact that memory never really dies, but is only quiescent and can be prodded into life again by long and deep thought, I am able to see again the three of us sitting at the table in the dark-panelled dining-room, my Mother at the end of the table, my Father at the side, myself opposite him; two fine gold and white pillars behind him, the rest of the room in semi-darkness, lighted only by a shaded lamp on the table, which I decorated with a garden of snowdrops or primroses, or later a beautiful Japanese bronze “bottle” vase with a spray of pyrus japonica in it; later still a bowl of roses. A Frenchman once said: “Une fleur de M Orchardson est un fort bon tableau,” and he, W. Q. O., took an interest in the table flowers, though he did not always see them till his attention was called to them, except roses, which always attracted his notice.

This vision brings hearing, and I hear my Father’s animated voice rising and falling in strange inflexions, sometimes bass and sometimes tenor, but mostly midway between. I hear his careful, vivid way of expressing himself, of using language properly; I hear my Mother’s occasional quiet comments, my own intent questions.

“What’s this new idea of solid oil colours—it sounds more like pastels?”

“Yes, that’s it, just oil crayons, a new royal road that will lead to anywhere rather than to art, an invention arising from the craving to do things easily. An American inventor came to this country some years ago with a scheme for spraying the paint on to the canvas. Such devices are merely the invention of the enemy, for there is no substitute for brains and work; and artifice is not art. It is the eye and brain that can select and mix the colour that makes the painter of genius or the common-or-garden duffer. No artist with the true spirit within him will adopt ready-made colours, and if he have not individuality and the true spirit, it matters not what devices he adopts.”

“There’s a fellah who puts on lumps of paint and then sculpts them! Then Sargent (and others of that ilk) puts on streaks of paint and does not, or even can’t finish them—magnificently effective in the distance—but not finished.”

He paused and I suggested that finishing highly might lead to niggling.

“No. Look at Rembrandt and Titian. Of course, the Pre-Raphaelites were too minute, but it was a good training, and see what it led to in Millais.”

“And Rossetti and Hunt?”

“Oh, no! Rossetti and Blake were both called painters by poets, but painters called them poets. It is much more difficult to paint than to write—look at all the failed painters who have taken to writing!” he added laughingly.

Quite characteristically he took no notice of Hunt.

“Is training so important?”

“Well, any training is good enough for a man who can do without it!” was the half-laughing answer.

“You didn’t go to Paris for training. Was Lauder better? You know, all Lauder’s pupils are recognizable—easily.”

“Yes, Lauder’s enthusiasm and the atmosphere he threw around were invaluable, yet those of us who can paint would have painted—and been successful—in any case, though possibly in another manner.”

“What about Paris?”

“Oh! that’s simply very jolly, but not at all necessary. For one thing the French schools tend to destroy individuality; the English leave that alone. People say that there are too many masters at the Academy, but it is only the duffer who gets muddled. And who cares about the duffer? He is better out of it. Your real good man can take what is best—the cream, as it were, and keep his own individuality. It is only a clever student that can take advantage of advice—and he doesn’t need it.”

“I saw in the paper the other day that the Academy ought to elect etchers and engravers—I don’t see why.”

“No, their art is good as far as it goes, but it is incomplete; it lacks colour and is seldom original.”

“People are always criticizing the R.A.”

“Yes, and they have no right to do so at all. We are an entirely private and independent body. Why! when part of the Trafalgar Square galleries were offered to the Academy we refused them because we could not get them unless we agreed to have a representative of the Government always with us. So it was better to build our own galleries; independence cost us a lot, but was well worth it. Fancy a Government man always about!”

“There is one thing, though,” he went on reflectively, “that the Academy could do better—and that’s the Chantrey Bequest. They will insist on spending the whole of the money every year, instead of saving it up and buying something really worth while.”

“Do you like teaching at the R.A. schools?”

“In a way; it is interesting seeing the young chaps—the halflings, as Grandpapa used to call them—and how they come on. I told a young fellah one day that if he wanted to paint like that he had better do something else.”^[2]

“What a curious thing fashion in art is! And fashion only corrupts art—just like a woman who chooses the latest fashion in hats, wholly indifferent as to whether it suits her or not.”

“People imitate each other, I suppose?”

“Yes, but in art all that is worthy of imitation is inimitable.”

One night I told him that I had been to the R.A. four times on purpose to see Sargent’s “Three Graces.” The first time I saw it I was so tremendously “struck” and impressed that I went a second time specially to enjoy it, but was disappointed, a third time confirmed the disappointment, and after a fourth time I did not want to see it again, I knew it all. Why?”

“Yes, that is Sargent, he makes a tremendous impression at first, but you see the whole thing at once, and there is nothing further left to see—it’s the lack of finish. The work is carried only so far, which is magnificent—but not far enough. Look at Titian, Rembrandt, Velasquez—their work strikes you—impresses you at once, but you can see it, must see it again and again, for there is always more to see—that is the test of final greatness.”

“Your work is finished,” I said, with intent to make him blush; which he did like a boy. My Mother and I laughed, he looked so shy—he was delightfully young and modest.

I once told him when I was asking for money to go travelling, that I did not like asking for money as it seemed too much like asking for his life. He looked surprised, so I had to explain that I thought he painted with his heart’s blood.

“Yes, lassie, I do—with my heart’s blood,” he said thinkingly, soberly, then putting his arm round me and kissing me, he added cheerfully, “but that’s the way the world is made. I earn my living that way; and it is a pleasure to give you money—that’s what it’s for, to give you all. So never be afraid to ask.”

Photo T. & R. Annan
SIR DAVID STEWART, 1896
By kind permission of the Aberdeen Town Council.

This little scene took place in the white corridor at Hawley—how well I remember my Father’s appearance, his fine ascetic face, kind and beautiful, his thin and still upright figure, well set-off by his light grey-blue tweed suit.

To return to the dining-room.

One night conversation turned on old days, and he laughed as he thought of the Fitzroy Square ménage, “the Barracks,” and how he had painted out a man’s black eye so that he could go to a dance.

Then we came to Spenser Street, and he spoke of Pellegrini, the Italian caricaturist.

“I only knew him slightly—a curious chap. He paid me one of the greatest and quaintest compliments I ever had, one day before I knew him at all. He came up to me in the Academy suddenly and said, shaking his fist in my face: ‘Mr Orchardson, if I thought that by killing you I could paint like that, I would stab you in the heart.’ And he made a gesture as though he were actually stabbing me.”

“The picture worthy of a stab in the heart?”

“Oh, ‘Hard Hit,’ I think. He was a curious chap. When he lay dying a friend came to see him and noticing a pile of dirty shirts in a corner, and Pellegrini being half-asleep, he rang for the servant to come and clear them away to make the room a little tidy and more comfortable. But, just as she was picking them up, Pellegrini started up and weakly called out, ‘Don’t do that, don’t do that, don’t take away my sketches.’ He was very excited and was only calmed by the shirts being put down again—poor chap, the cuffs were covered with sketches.”

Spenser Street and queer compliments suggested tennis—a man was once introduced to “Mr Orchardson—the one who has the tennis court, you know.” “A curious sort of renown,” said my Father.

Talking about Munich one night, I mentioned Titian’s “Abraham sacrificing Isaac” and the Greek “Sleeping Faun” as being worth all the rest of the art in Munich put together. My Father knew Dresden but not Munich. Then I mentioned going round the modern gallery searching for colour—good drawing abounded, but all the colour was muddy. At last I spied good colour in the distance, and joyfully hastening towards it—found it was a familiar Tuke. On which my Father remarked that the Germans were never colourists, and had I seen any Menzels? On my answering yes, and that they were marvels of drawing, but also lacked colour, he said even engravings showed that greatest of all faults. Then he asked about Lenbach, who had been in London some years before and had come with an introduction to “Orchardson.” On my saying that his work was awfully good, but not original, being more like Old Masters than the Old Masters themselves, except a few perhaps, such as the General von Moltke, he commented that he had judged so from the prints he had seen and that it was probably the result of too much slavish copying in his youth, copying being a foolish method of learning, and one that was sure to lead to imitation. And “you cannot imitate the inimitable.”

Lenbach, so far as I remember, painted portraits only, which suggested the question, “Is it easy to make a portrait like?”

“Yes, it is no proof of great talent to catch a likeness,” said my Father, “anybody, any artist that is, can do that—it is merely a matter of seeing. The question is, can he make a picture? The artistic purpose of a picture should come first.”

And from there, no doubt, we turned to fishing.

W. Q. O.’s note-book:

Another time, probably earlier—I forget—the three of us went down to Lord Swaythling’s, at that time Sir Samuel Montagu. We found the old Jewish customs, which were most carefully kept up, very interesting, but one could not help being reminded of Punch when the Christian butler doled out the hats for the long grace before and after meals; Lord Swaythling got my Father’s little hat balanced on the top of his big head, and my Father’s neat head suddenly disappeared inside Lord Swaythling’s gigantic topper.

My parents stayed there one Passover time which, they said, was even more interesting.

My Father went trout fishing there in the Itchen and also tried for salmon in a celebrated pool, but I think he got nothing as the pool was frequently netted.

My Father remained hopeful of the Darenth fishing for a long time, but had his best times away at Ramsbury and then on the Chess, besides various visits.

A Fly Fishers’ Club friend (Mr Paul Taylor) wrote in 1902 to ask whether he was making public the experiments at Hawley and if not, whether he, Mr Taylor, might do so? He was anxious to know also how the rainbows he put in our pond were thriving?

Mr Taylor often fished at Farningham and sometimes came down to our water and wrote often to W. Q. O.

If I remember rightly, the experiment had to do with the feeding of trout and the poisoning of them in the river and came to nothing. My Father daily fed the rainbows in the pond on minced liver and lights, but he spattered himself and all who came to watch the taming of the trout, so that he usually had the performance to himself except when an unsuspecting visitor accepted the invitation.

The pond was close beside the river, which fed it, and one year a big flood came, the pond overflowed and the trout disappeared. I find the following note in one of my Father’s notebooks:

The following draft letter was probably to Mr Basil Field, about 1901, at least the Fields came to Hawley about that time.

At Hawley and all round the neighbourhood we made some pleasant friends and also met some oddities, about whom my Father remarked: “I always wondered where the English people came from that the French object to so much—now I know!”

I always consider, and suppose my Father taught me, that artist-folk are the equals of anybody from Princes down to Plumbers (perhaps one should say up to Plumbers now?). At any rate his manners to a charwoman were as charming as to a duchess; the only time his manner varied was when the woman was very beautiful or very witty, and then his own charm and wit were redoubled.

All people, however, do not understand equality. One day a poor “county lady” and a rich “city lady,” close neighbours who had never called on each other, called on my Mother at the same time. When the “city lady” had left the “county lady” turned to my Mother and said: “I had no idea a city lady could be so nice.”

It seems odd after such a remark that the “county lady” should become a great friend. But as my Father remarked when told of the incident, “After all, it is only because she is fifty years behind the times like everyone else round here. Strange to find the backwoods within seventeen miles of London.”

We had a good many week-end visitors at first before my Father grew too delicate. Old friends mostly, including the MacWhirters, the John Stevensons and Tom Graham, whose portrait of my Father hung in the dining-room. Mr. Graham had presented it to my Mother and wrote to W. Q. O.: “Mrs. Orchardson can look on the sketch as a monument of your patience and amiability.”

This portrait shows “Orchardson the Thinker”; many a time have I seen him sitting in just that attitude in his easy chair in the studio, with his back to the light to save his eyes; he would come into meals when called, but the same far-away expression remained on his face, and if one spoke to him he would answer politely but absentmindedly unless the subject was something very special. Then he would come back to the world for a few minutes, only to relapse into his own thoughts the moment the subject was finished.

The next phase would be his sketching portfolio with the kitchen paper and he would make a sketch of the light and shadow—the values. After that a new canvas would be set up, he would draw a few rough though careful charcoal lines, pencil for the face, in late years sometimes none, and then go straight ahead and finish the picture very carefully and very quickly.

The “Uffizi” Portrait, painted by himself for that gallery by invitation, shows him as a worker, the man of action, the keen observer, himself exactly as he was when working; the only mistake is that he should have had two mirrors instead of one, but he had not thought it worth while. When I expressed my regret that he should be handed down to posterity incorrectly, he actually and really apologized for his “careless laziness” and said that had he realized that it mattered and that anyone would mind he would have “seen to it,” especially as it was his “little daughter” that was minding.

The Thinker sometimes made little notes of his thoughts and scribbled them down on any scrap of paper. My Mother carefully preserved them all and I have spent many hours deciphering them and letters. Few are dated:

1902.

1903.

The R.A. was being discussed in the newspapers, as to whether it should open its doors on Sunday. Orchardson was a strong upholder of its privacy and objected strongly to its allowing such a discussion.

Orchardson was extraordinarily loyal to the R.A. and I find that “he was known to be a non-partisan member.”

Undated:

Orchardson disliked mastic varnish and got Charlie to “do up” the “Lady Gilbey” with a mixture of megilp, poppy oil and turpentine with most satisfactory results.

My Mother’s diary of 1883 records: “Quiller and I had a small argument on a dress we saw in Holborn restaurant where we were dining. I said it was blue on black ground, Quiller said it was white on blue ground. Which was right?”

These small arguments on colour, or rather on the names of the colours, continued. My Mother would say: “If I go to a shop and ask for such and such a colour I shall get what I want, but if you go and ask with your names you won’t get anything you want at all.”

To which my Father would reply that in that case shopmen did not know the names of colours and an artist did. Purple and allied colours and blues and greens were the chief bones of this friendly contention.

One day I had been photographing some trees for my Father—for “The Doves,” I fancy—and at lunch-time conversation turned on the uses of photography to an artist. My Father said photography was little use to a painter because the camera does not see as the eye sees, perspective, for instance, and besides it records only a fleeting moment; “in landscape, art is not ready-made but must be selected, the camera cannot select; and in a portrait the camera can give only the momentary expression of the face.”

“Ah, give me character—character I must have, good if possible, but bad rather than none at all. Moreover, lack of character is a fault which detracts from beauty.”

Photo T. & R. Annan
H. B. FERGUSSON, ESQ., 1896
By kind permission of the Dundee Art Gallery.

My Father painted only about eighteen portraits of women and he made them all rather severe, though beautiful. Was it, I wonder, his wife’s influence altered his views of women, or did he choose his wife because she came up to his ideal? She was cheerful and gentle in her manner, yet in repose her face was both severe and sad; and though neither pretty nor beautiful, she was exceedingly good to look at and her face gave one—everyone—a pleasant feeling; her voice was very pleasant too, though not specially musical.

She was very small and looked very young when Charlie was first grown up, which led to an amusing contretemps. She, her husband and her six-foot son were out together, and having hailed a hansom, were discussing the most convenient way of sitting. Cabby settled it:

“You two gents sit be’ind and the little ’un in front.”

The “little ’un” was highly indignant, but the others “roared” with laughter and took the advice.

Yet not all the women my Father painted were beautiful in the accepted sense of the word. One in particular I remember was described as ugly by young men, yet because she had character she became a beauty in the portrait.

It is only natural for an artist to write notes on art, the wonder is my Father wrote so few; it is not so natural, however, for an artist to think deeply about religious matters. That he did I already knew from his remarks to me, but as he and my Mother differed, and as they both disapproved of “threeping” opinions down other people’s throats, religion was never mentioned en famille.

He admired the English Prayer Book immensely for its beauty both of thought and language, but he preferred the Presbyterian method of Church government because it allowed of more independence on the part of the congregation. He thought evening church too emotional, but his sympathies extended to all methods and creeds.

I remember a mission meeting at school, once when I was very small, a mission to the “Indian Heathen.” I came home and told my Father about it, of course using the word “heathen” as it had been used at school. Great was my surprise at being thoroughly snubbed for using the word in that connection, and so indignant was I at the injustice of being blamed for other people’s faults that I neglected to ask my usual “why”? However, my Mother explained matters afterwards by telling me that “Titumy” thought the word heathen ought not to be applied to anyone who believed in God, whatever His name might be.

Years afterwards we were talking about books and my Father mentioned that he had read the Bible right through as a “history of a very interesting people, not as a sacred book.” I remember just one thing he said to the effect that the expression “God of gods” and other similar expressions mean that the Jews believed in other people’s gods as well as their own, and merely considered their own God a greater and more powerful God than any other and did not believe in the One and Only God under whatsoever name.

The beauty of the English Bible led us to Shakespeare, and my Father began quoting and reciting long passages although he had not read it since he was a boy. He thought the idea that Shakespeare might be Bacon very foolish; he also thought annotators often wrong, but I only remember one instance that he mentioned. “I have had losses,” says Dogberry; some annotators put “leases,” it appears; as my Father said, anyone can boast of leases, but few would boast of losses, and the humour of “losses” is in keeping with the character, whereas “leases” is neither humorous nor in keeping.

He wrote down a few religious and moral thoughts in his usual manner on scraps of paper, backs of envelopes and in little notebooks, none connected with any other; yet if carefully put together there seems a connection:

In 1903 he was desperately ill at Hawley and his life was despaired of. On his recovery we met on the stairs one day as he was going into the garden and he stopped me and said:

He told my Uncle the same thing, so must have been thinking much on this subject. In a notebook of about that date I find the following thoughts:

No date findable:

I only once heard my Father speak in anger about a religious matter—righteous anger; he inveighed bitterly against the cruelty and wickedness of religious fanaticism.

He had the strictest possible views of honesty and honour in money and all other affairs of life. He admired one old French friend, Mr Casella, immensely because he had lost a fortune rather than run the risk of “robbing” (i.e. speculating) another man in the effort to retain it; as it happened the possibly-saving venture in question was a success.

“There is nothing wrong in doing a bill for three months if a man is sure in his own mind that he will be able to meet it at the end of that time; yet a habit once acquired of doing bills may and often does lead to a man’s doing one, knowing that in all probability he will be unable to pay when the time runs out. It is this, which happens daily, that I think a fraud.”

“What position can a man occupy who can’t pay his way? When he has made his position it is time enough to join the twaddle of ‘Art for Art’s sake.’ How is it possible to pay his way if he can’t—or won’t—live within his income? Is it strictly honourable to spend more knowingly, to run into debt on the chance of loss to his creditors?”

My Father and Mother were both absolutely truthful, and they both had the highest possible sense of honour and of duty.

“The C[onscience] is unfailingly eloquent on what it owes itself, but how about the duties it owes to the state—are they a negligible quantity?”

“If you change the word ‘lie’ into the two words ‘Term[inological] inex[actitude]’ you alter its meaning.”

My Mother told me that when she got engaged people told her that her betrothed was rather over-lively, given to drink and women, but that she did not believe it. Her belief was justified, for no more honourable man ever lived after marriage, and as for what went before there is no slightest record or indication of wrongdoing; he was recognised as fastidiously honourable; Chalmers remarked: “Orchardson won’t drink to please anybody,” and in an early letter Orchardson himself wrote that he could not go to a certain house because the temptation of a pretty housemaid lay in the way; which sounds more like honestly fleeing from temptation than weakly succumbing to it.

My Father was very forgetful about money, but not indifferent to it, or rather to what it could bring in the way of comfort and help to his wife and children. He never painted “pot-boilers,” and when Agnew remarked, “The public don’t want that sort of picture from you,” I can imagine his scathing reply. Yet had necessity not driven, his output would have been less than it actually was. He wrote in a little note-book, all by itself:

Like most Scots, my Father enjoyed an argument; having no one at home to argue with, he would amuse himself and us making very definite statements one day and the next he would refute every one of them. When taxed with changing his mind he would say laughingly, “Who never changed his opinion never corrected an error. The minority is nearly always right and I am usually in that minority.”

After that desperate illness in 1903 he never quite recovered, at least for any length of time, his old verve and élan; we all noticed, too, a curious thing about him—he would be looking thin and tired, a favourite visitor would come in, and instantly his dreamy eyes would wake up, he would become alert, lively and witty, and he would actually appear quite plump and pink-cheeked for the time being. When the visitor left, and the excitement calmed down, he would once more become his usual thin, worn self. The same thing happened when doctors came to see him so that they never realised his weakness. Strong was the mind that controlled the weak body!

He still walked upright and jauntily, though he no longer walked “with a poker down his back,” as Charlie once expressed it; his brown hair was thin now and still fine as a baby’s, his military moustache white, his fine hands thin, nervous and strongwilled; and his face beautiful—no, lovely, worthy to be loved.

That military moustache, upright carriage and jaunty walk caused him to receive a salute from the sentries every time he passed a barracks or any such place—much to his amusement and even enjoyment, for he quite appreciated the compliment to his appearance and carriage.

One day at dinner we were discussing beauty in general and noses in particular, and he told me he had often sat for the head of Christ as a young man in Edinburgh, and for a girl when he was a young boy. One day one friend was grumbling to another that he could not find a suitable nose for his picture.

“What ails ye at Orchardson’s nose?” said the other, and Orchardson was duly “roped in.”^[3]

My Father laughed over this—he took his good looks for granted.

[E. O.’s letters]:

In the Spring of 1905 my Father was desperately ill again, no specific disease but a general disfunctioning of everything owing to the heart not functioning properly. He would not allow anyone but my Mother to attend to him at first, but as in 1903, he was again persuaded to let our old “Nursie”—Nurse Witherow—come and help her. Nursie was not merely a paid nurse, she was received into our household as an old and valued friend, and she waited on him with love in her heart as well as medicine in her hands, so that he found her attentions soothing—an important factor in such an illness.

Everyone loved him, the servants vied with each other in wishing to help, and great was the pride of Kemp and his son—coachman and gardener—when they were called in to carry “the master” from one bedroom to another for a change of scene when he was recovering. He was sitting in a carrying chair, looking bright, and gave them a cheerful greeting; they lifted him, expecting some weight, and he went sky-high like a feather and nearly overturned. Fortunately he was in no way upset either physically or mentally and rather enjoyed the “little joke,” and the two men carried him very carefully thereafter, but I think the little incident made us realise by what a small margin he had escaped death.

Photo Henry Dixon & Son
REFLECTIONS, 1896
By kind permission of James Ogston, Esq.

Mr. Basil Field wrote to him in April:

Telegram to W. Q. Orchardson, April 16th, 1905.

In June my Father was sufficiently recovered to go to Brighton. Hotels being too noisy and the food unsuitable for an invalid, our old friends the Rattrays recommended some rooms on the sea-front.

A funny little incident occurred that I cannot refrain from telling, although it is against myself, as it both rather shocked and amused my parents.

I went down first to see that the rooms were well aired and so on, and to be at the station with a cab so that there should be no waiting about for our invalid. The rooms were good. I went to the station, engaged a cab, and awaited the train. As it came in I examined each out-of-window head very carefully for my Mother, who was to be on the look-out. Not a sign of her. For ten minutes or more I hunted up and down that platform, and was at last standing still and supposing that my people had missed the train, when I heard my Mother’s voice behind me.

“Well, Hilda! don’t you know us to-day?” I swung round—and there they were! It appeared that I had stared at my Mother who had been looking out of the train, entirely without recognition; so now I examined her face and found that she had a new hat and that I could not remember her new style of hairdressing which she had adopted some years before!

My Mother was much amused, but my Father was really rather shocked at me not knowing my own Mother. What it is to have “bold brown eyes” and a dreaming mind behind them!

All the same my Father need not have been so shocked, for he once did much the same thing. One day he and my Mother were to meet at Charing Cross to go down to Hawley. My Mother was a little early and sat down on a bench to wait; by and by my Father came in and looked for his wife. He searched everywhere, all the benches too, including the one where his wife sat. At last he gave it up, and she, deciding she had teased him long enough, got up and went to him.

“Hallo, Nonnie! where have you been hiding?”

“Over there,” she replied, “on that bench that you have been staring at.”

“What! were you amongst those old ladies?”

“Yes,” said my Mother laughing, “and I was one of them. I am no longer the young girl you married and were looking for.”

“Well!” said my Father laughing, “I never realised it before.”

At Brighton my Father spent a good deal of time in a bath chair; at first I think it reminded him rather painfully of the time when he walked by Mr. Joseph’s chair a little before that friend died, but he never brooded over the irreparable and with returning health became quite cheerful again. My Grandmother, who lived at Brighton and with whom I was staying, of course exchanged visits with my parents and the intellectual occupation of “promenading” was the chief occupation of us all.

As soon as he was strong enough to think my Father pined for his studio, and we went back to Hawley and 13 p.p.

Apparently part of a letter, 1905:

[E. O. to her Mother. July 8th, 1905]:

Mr St. Quintin to my Mother in July 1905: “Although sorry that I shall not have you at Bois Mill this week, I feel that you have decided wisely. I thought that Mr Orchardson looked tired, perhaps oppressed with the heat only, he had been walking about the grounds with me.”

In July Mrs MacWhirter wrote to “save Mr Orchardson the shock of seeing it in the papers,” that she and Mr MacWhirter were thrown out of a cab—the horse fell—and that Mr MacWhirter got his thigh broken and was taken to Charing Cross Hospital.

We had two delightful visits from Sir George and Lady Reid.

In July 1905, Orchardson received the special commemorative Diploma from “The Louisiana Purchase Exhibition, conferred in recognition of your interest and co-operation in the Universal Exhibition of 1904.” In April 1903, W. Q. O. was appointed one of the members of the Royal Commission for the “St. Louis International Exhibition.” He was invited to exhibit at the Carnegie Institute, Pittsburg, but as my letter to that institute remains unanswered, I am unable to say whether he did or not. An American newspaper cutting, without name or date, in my Mother’s collection, acclaims him the “greatest painter of the age,” not even putting their own Whistler and Sargent equal to still less above him. I often wonder who will last the longer, Orchardson or Sargent.

If my Father’s letters to other people were scanty those to my Mother were not, though they were short. The lovers were rarely apart, but when they were they wrote to each other every day and my Mother kept all her lover’s letters. I have left out those of no particular interest—domestic matters, damp sheets, missing shirts and so on—but the variety of endings is so remarkable that I have compiled them and give a list for the benefit of lovers. “Quiller” comes at the end of each—98 endings to 148 letters:

Photo Fred Hardie
W. Q. ORCHARDSON, 1897
By Tom Graham.
By kind permission of the Aberdeen Art Gallery.

When my Father died, and I at last took courage to try and write this book, I thought that I would go Home from South Africa, that I would sit at a desk with a note-book, and that my Mother would sit in an easy chair close by, telling me little tales of all sorts, but particularly of the pictures; and that my artist brother, Charlie, would drop in now and then and add to the collection. But alas, my Mother is dead of cancer (1917), my brother gave his life in the Great and Dreadful War (1917).

South Africa’s stranglehold is on me, and there seems no hope of my ever getting Home to consult old friends. Alas, again! Those old friends are growing scarce, so nothing remains but to tell the very little I know myself, or have been able to find out.

According to my Mother’s diary, my Father intended to paint Nelson, Beethoven, Tennyson’s “Enid,” “The Pope and Lady Mary,” “By Order of the Executors,” “Burning the Midnight Oil” and “The Burning of the Sarah Sands”; he began, but did not finish, “The Last Dance”; and began two of widows, who excited his sympathy, one to be called “Solitude”—a woman driving alone in a barouche—and another, “The Widow”—a woman in widow’s weeds sitting alone at a breakfast table.

According to a newspaper article, he made two drawings of Gladstone’s head and one of a “growler.” Almost his last work was a view of Brighton front by moonlight from his room.

When painting an historical subject my Father would go to immense trouble to get the details correct; he and his wife would hunt museums, libraries, curiosity shops, and even friends’ houses till he was satisfied. My Mother read aloud books concerning the period in question as well as the particular incident.

His last historical picture was exhibited in 1903, “Mrs Siddons”; after that he found his physical strength unequal to the task of research.

1874. The portrait of my Grandfather, Charles Moxon, was always considered very fine; my Father both loved and admired his subject, and never had any difficulty with the work.

Curiously enough the pendant to it, my Grandmother, was never a great success though extremely like; my Father was dissatisfied with it and had some trouble with the background. My Uncle (C.F. Moxon) tells me that the chessmen are so placed that the Queen could never have come from her proper square; that is possible, but they must have been so placed or W. Q. O. would not have so painted them—he was a very exact observer, and, I think, did not know chess. The Queen may have been accidentally moved and displaced.

1877. “Jessica” was commonly supposed to be a fancy portrait of my Mother and later of myself, but my Mother never sat for it at all, and I only for half an hour or so for the ear, many years later. It was painted from an Italian model, who must have been strangely like us.

1878. “Conditional neutrality” was a portrait of my brother Charlie at the age of four years; my Mother made the quaint little suit. He was placed on the throne and told to stand still, which he did, so energetically that his wriggles soon brought him to the edge of the throne and he fell off. He was picked up and replaced, only to fall off again in another five minutes, a performance which continued to the end of the daily sitting until the portrait was finished.

1879. I have often wondered what suggested “Hard Hit” to my Father; possibly the entire lack of any gambling instinct in himself—though I have known him to play poker for fun and a few shillings—made gambling in others appear noticeable and striking, and for the incident itself, the dramatic always appealed to him.

The title came about in a curious little way. He painted the figure of the rooked and ruined young man at the door from a model who was actually a gambler; one day W. Q. O. commented on his dejected appearance.

“I was hard hit last night, sir,” the man replied.

“Hard luck!” exclaimed my Father. “ ‘Hard Hit,’ the very thing for the title,” and so it remained.

On my remarking on the quantity of cards, my Father told me that he had at first bought only a dozen packs, but found that number insufficient, and finally he had fifty packs which he threw down at each corner of the table, so that in the picture 200 packs actually appear. It seems that gamblers have a new pack for each game, at any rate they did so at the period and in the society the picture depicts.

1880. My Father admired the Great Napoleon immensely, not, I suppose, for his morals, but for his power. W. Q. O. admired strength in any form, but particularly strength of character; the mention of power reminds me of a little tale he was fond of telling. A model was sitting to him, who had just been posing for Frith. “And I heard the old gentleman repeating earnestly to himself time and again,” said the model, “God give me power, more power.”

Said my Father as he told the tale, “Power. Yes, power is what is needed. . . . But I didn’t know before that Frith knew what he lacked. I respect him much more now.”

To return to “Napoleon on Board the Bellerophon.”

There were many dramatic moments in Napoleon’s life, but surely the most dramatic of them all was in the terrible farewell to France and ambition when he stood a stern figure, alone and sad, with the whispering gossip of faithful friends and followers behind and apart from him. Does not the solitude of the figure tell of the solitude of the mind? A fallen god thinking of the “might have been.”

Having seized his dramatic moment, only the carrying out of the idea remained, and Orchardson obtained a permit (through Mr Weigall) from the Admiral of the Port at Portsmouth, to paint on board the Victory (old Bellerophon being broken up) in Portsmouth Harbour; he received at the same time the offer of much hospitality and a permit to view the dockyard, from Admiral Foley, while he made his sketches.

On returning to London, the painting of the boards seemed likely to be a tedious job, so Mr Pettie suggested that Q. O. should get a perspective man to draw them in. Q. O. protested that it would be very little trouble, but was persuaded. The man came with the implements of his trade, and Q. O. went out and left him at it. At 10 p.m. or so he returned, went to his studio, looked at his picture, sent for the housemaid and demanded a scrubbing-brush and a pail of water, with which he scrubbed out the day’s work of the perspective man, then he drew the boards in himself easily and quickly. He told me the boards appeared to be almost standing on end when drawn according to rule because the eye does not see correctly; and a picture to be correct—right—must represent what the eye can see.

My Mother’s diary records that he engaged a man to paint some of the ropes. “Poor man,” she exclaims, “he has only done an inch in a whole day,” so W. Q. O. dismissed him and did the ropes himself in his usual rapid way. This, I believe, was the first and last time he ever attempted to employ mechanical or other aid.

W. Q. O. had some trouble finding a model for Napoleon, but one night, when he and my Mother were dining at Lady Downshire’s, her daughter was there—Mrs Louis Wingfield, who bore a striking resemblance to Napoleon. During the evening he managed to ask his wife if she thought Mrs Wingfield would be offended at being asked to sit. My Mother thought not, and immediately put the matter to the proof; Mrs Wingfield was delighted and remarked that her resemblance to Napoleon had often been noticed.

So the Great Man was represented by one of the sex he so despised.

All the figures in the picture are portraits, and many were the books my Mother read aloud to the artist in order to find exact descriptions and drawings.

W. Q. O. appreciated French criticism almost more than any other, so here is a little tale (that he never heard, I fancy) from the late Mr McKay, R.S.A., who sent it to me specially for this book:

“I had occasion some long time ago to make notes in writing on some of the pictures by Scottish Artists in the Tate Gallery. I had been thus engaged for some time before the Napoleon, enjoying the quiet which suits such a purpose (for there were few visitors), when I was aware of a lady and gentleman drawing nearer. They were conversing volubly in French in a rather high key, and from my slight knowledge of the language I could gather that sarcasm was the prevailing note in their comments. But when they came to the Napoleon a sudden silence fell on them, and I could hear the gentleman explaining the picture in a low voice; after which they sat down beside me, absorbed in the picture. Then after some five or ten minutes’ silence, the gentleman rose, made two or three steps forward and, facing the canvas, threw out his arms to their fullest extent, with the words: ‘C’est magnifique,’ which could be heard all over the room. The whole thing was so French, so dramatic, that I never see the picture or a reproduction of it without recalling the scene.”

The following note for the proposed personages in this picture is in one of my Father’s note-books:

On the engraving are written beneath the figures from left to right:

A third spelling, probably the correct one for the doctor’s name, given by his son in a letter to W. Q. O., is Maignault.

“Napoleon on Board the Bellerophon” was always much in demand as an illustration, which was a compliment, but the compliment from America was a funny one.

“I am writing a play . . . and I want your gracious permission to use your picture “Napoleon on Board the Bellerophon.” . . . I will have it copied in the best possible style, frame and all, and use it on the hoardings with your name in full underneath. . . .”

What more could an artist want? Frame and all!

1881.

This portrait of the beautiful Mrs Clowes was a gift, I believe, and was the foundation of a lifelong friendship. Mrs Clowes, whom my Father described as the “loveliest woman in London,” and my Mother exchanged promises of friendship to the children should either die young.

1881.

The Pigeons in “The Farmer’s Daughter” are “portraits” of some of our own pigeons at Ivyside. My Father delighted in them and taught them to feed out of our hands, and to perch on his arms and shoulders.

Mlle Lévillé was staying with us about this time, and he instructed her to hold out her arms with some corn in her hands at the morning game of feeding them. She did so, the pigeons circled round and settled on her—I do not know which my Father enjoyed most, the friendliness of his pigeons or the Frenchwoman’s childlike enjoyment. It was a little episode he often mentioned.

The handsome pigeon on the girl’s arm in the picture was the favourite, and I fancy that he and the above incident were the actual cause of the picture.

The barn is—or was—an old one at a farm near Birchington.

1883.

In “Voltaire” a dramatic moment is again the cause of the picture; Carlyle’s “Frederick the Great” provided the incident and the British Museum reading-room provided detailed information; my Father and Mother went there together without giving their name so as to avoid interruption.

Photo T. & R. Annan
TROUBLE, 1897
By kind permission of James Ogston, Esq.

My Mother’s head appears partly more than once in this picture.

Sometime later Sir Lauder Brunton (the physician) asked permission to use “Voltaire” as an illustration to one of his books. He also sent a pamphlet, “The Method of Zadig,” in which the following occurs:

To this W. Q. O. wrote a marginal note. “The point is, is that glitter or simply reflection? Where does that glitter come from? If caused by anger or other passion it would indicate a power in the eye of emitting light; if not, then a difference of tension.”

Sir Lauder then wrote his thanks for the loan of the “Voltaire” photograph, and added, “I see I must apologize for my comments upon Voltaire’s eye because I see on examining the photograph with a magnifying lens that you have put a glitter, the absence of which I was deploring. If you will allow me I will get the engraver to enlarge the eye so as to show this.”

Feb. 28th, 1893.

Many years later my Father, my Mother and I were staying with the Alec Stevensons at Weybridge, and a son of Mr. Birket Foster came to dinner. During the evening a discussion on eyes occurred, and my Father expressed his opinion, as usual, that the “flashing” eyes and “glittering” eyes of novelists was nonsense as eyes can neither flash nor glitter; and that the whole expression in human eyes is due to movements of the eyelids. Mr Willie Birket Foster thereupon produced some drawings he had made. On one piece of paper he had simply drawn the iris and pupil of an eye; on other pieces he had drawn eyelids of different kinds, each with a hole in the paper in the place where the iris should have been. These he superimposed in turn on the one iris-and-pupil drawing, thus producing a laughing eye, an angry eye, and so on, according to the eyelid, the iris of course being the same in each case.

This was considered by the company in general, and my Father in particular, conclusive proof that eyes in themselves express nothing.

I have since noticed that blue eyes in a rage become a brighter blue than normally; and the blue iris certainly appears to emit a sparkle—I have looked most carefully; but was too late with my careful observation to tell him and ask his further opinion.

Mention of Birket Foster reminds me of a curious little fact. In 1867 (Ex. 1868), W. Q. O. painted a portrait of Mrs. Birket Foster; in 1871 or 2 Whistler painted one of his mother. In after years the Orchardson portrait was supposed by some people to have been imitated from the Whistler—presumably it was the other way round.

1883.

The “Mariage de Convenance” was begun on November 8th, 1883, according to my Mother’s diary, which records nothing further of the picture until:

1884.

March 27th. Quiller’s birthday, we get letters and cards from the children. . . . Mr. Gosse (art critic for the Pall Mall Gazette) called yesterday and considered the picture a great tragedy. Agnew and his son called, he thought it tremendously good and wanted to buy it. Quiller was obliged to tell him he had promised to let someone else see it. After lunch the Middletons came. Mrs. Middleton thinks it is the best Quiller has ever done, so do I in a great many things—the work, for instance; I believe the woman’s head is the finest thing that was ever done.

At five o’clock Deschamps calls with his buyer—Q. goes for a walk. We dine at the Trowers’, meet Sir Frederick and Lady Pollock and have a pleasant evening. Lady Pollock is a quaint old lady but nice, she actually thought Quiller was a young man to be married and was surprised to hear he had been married eleven years.

My Father was fifty-three years of age at this time, so it was rather surprising to hear that he looked too young to be married.

Mrs Middleton was my Mother’s godmother, and was a small spry woman with a wig of which the colour varied year by year; she was a great walker, and the last time I saw her, when she was nearing eighty years, she had just walked several miles across London from her house to my Grandmother’s; she was sitting bolt upright on a high-back chair; and on her head (she had taken off her bonnet) was a gorgeous red short wig—almost scarlet—with a straight fringe all round, bound with a black velvet “snood.” This quaint old lady was possessed of some pictures, one of which she left to my Mother—a Roberts.

The “Mariage de Covenance—After” was originally called “Ichabod,” but as it was not hung anywhere near the place where the picture to which it was a sequel had been hung my Father thought the connection not sufficiently apparent and changed the title. It was, by the way, very badly hung, and my Mother hints that jealousy was the cause.

Mr. Swabe, who bought “Voltaire,” wrote in 1885 that Mr. Marcus Huish of the Art Journal wanted to reproduce “Voltaire”: “The copyright as regards paintings is in such an unsatisfactory state that I always give the artist the benefit of it as long as the work does not leave my house, and I leave you therefore to make your own bargain with Mr Huish, but I should advise you not to move in the matter until approached by Mr Huish.”

1884.

Tate bought “Her first Dance,” and on the loan of it being asked for the Berlin Exhibition he wrote to my Father that he was quite willing on condition that if the picture should be lost or destroyed W. Q. O. should agree to make good the loss either by giving another picture of the same value or paying Fifteen hundred pounds in money.

My Father always said that Tate could not have chosen so many good pictures without “old Humphrey Roberts’ ” help, and that when he grew “cock-sure” and went without that help he chose badly.

1885.

W. Q. O. “very seldom, hardly ever, practically never,” as he himself once said of something else, accepted a commission for a picture except, of course, portraits. “The Salon of Madame Récamier,” however, was an exception, and my Mother’s diary records the occasion:

1884.

May 11th. We lunch at the Airds, having walked across the park [Hyde Park]. The Airds are nice homely people; he very much wants a picture of Quiller’s and has a beautiful place for one. We walk nearly all the way home. . . .

May 12th. Tea in the studio, and I read Mlle Lebrun aloud while Quiller thinks of his picture for Mr Aird; “Mme Necker” again presents itself.

May 16th. We go down to Watford to the McGregors, who have people to meet us at dinner.

May 17th. We stroll about and drive into Watford.

May 18th. A beautiful day; we stroll about the grounds, Quiller and I playing at lovers though we are such old married people.

May 19th. Back from Watford, having spent a very pleasant time.

May 20th. Down to Westgate, found the children all splendidly well and looking so nice. We stay with Papa and Mama.

May 21st and 22nd. Beautiful weather, enjoyed ourselves, then back to London.

May 23rd. Q. went to the Crystal Palace for the day—he is on the International Jury for pictures, he gets home at 7.45 and we spend the evening quietly. We finish Mme Lebrun and also read a short account of Mme Récamier, she is not a woman to be so much admired as I thought.

May 27th. Quiller works a little and I read J. Ampèré’s life to him, which contains a good deal about Mme Récamier. After lunch Q. goes to see Charlie Saunders (Tennis marker at Prince’s) play against the wonderful American [probably Pettit]. Saunders loses all the sets. Q. then plays tennis with Mr Trower.

May 28th. Quiller reads and thinks and wonders whether he is to do Mme Récamier or Mme Necker. I am obliged to go out in the morning, but after lunch we read and talk again; we go out about 4 o’clock to-day and try and get Mme Lenonnant’s Life of Mme Récamier but can’t manage it. We have tea out.

In the picture Fouché is talking to Mme Récamier herself, near them are Delille, Cuvier and Metternich. At the other side are Mme de Staël, Talleyrand, Lucien Bonaparte, Brillat Savarin, Talma, Bernadotte.

All the figures in the picture are portraits, I believe, these are, I know, Talleyrand being painted from a miniature by Isabey, lent by one of his descendants. The “model” for Mme de Staël, by the way, was our old friend Miss Henriette Cockran, a painter, and afterwards author of Celebrities and I and other books.

From a French paper: Duc de Montmorenci is given an arm-chair, ainsi nous voyons à ce trait que l’artist connaît à merveille cette époque, “in Society” les aristos taking precedence of the parvenus.

I met Mr (afterwards Sir John) Aird once or twice and I always rather wondered why he wanted a picture particularly—he was a contractor for the Assouan dam and other such works. The two following letters explain the matter, I think:

In answer to my inquiries Sir Arthur Cope writes:

1886.

“Master Baby” is a portrait group of my Mother and my youngest brother, Gordon. My Mother was actually amusing the baby with a fan when W. Q. O. was struck by the grace of the woman’s figure and by the delightful liveliness of the baby’s. He sketched the figures in at once and finished the whole picture in a fortnight, so he told me, I believe, but surely he must have said six weeks.

My Father said he painted the baby because it had such a strikingly big mouth, but I expect he only found that out after he had begun the work. The baby would only play with the fan for five or ten minutes at a time, and then howled, so a Japanese doll was used as a lay figure, not a very good one, for it was the floppiest thing imaginable.

The general public liked the lively baby best, but painters said the painting and drawing of the black figure was the real marvel. A student once asked my Father what colour to use when painting black. To which he replied, “Oh! any colours you like except black.”

“Master Baby” was sent to the Grosvenor Gallery, where it was sold; but my Mother wept so bitterly that the dear Quiller got it back again, and it remained in his possession till he was very ill and unable to work much, when he sold it to Mr McCulloch.

After that the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh gave 4000 guineas for it.

Photo T. & R. Annan
CHARCOAL STUDY FOR LORD PEEL, 1898
By kind permission of the Edinburgh National Gallery.

1887.

“The First Cloud” is the last of the three modern tragedies painted by W. Q. O. at this time. It has often been asked if his own life was so unhappy that it suggested them. But I think, on the contrary, it was the extreme happiness of his married life that made him see the tragedy of unsuitable mating—the rich old man, finished, a horrid wreck, and the handsome sensuous young wife seeking that which an old rake cannot give her; then the husband’s despair when he finds his wife gone; “ichabod!” the glory has departed, for he knows he cannot recall her be he never so forgiving, and surely he must see, if only dimly, that he, too, has need of forgiveness; and lastly, the small cloud that precedes a big one and a great storm.

The figures in the “First Cloud” were represented by friends—a Mrs Hope, one of a family of extraordinarily handsome sisters, and Tom Graham—they did not know each other either then or afterwards. The likeness of Mr Graham was exact, apart from the surliness.

W. Q. O. disclaimed all intention of teaching, indeed, he did not approve of didactic art, but it seems to me that these pictures are sermons.

1888.

“Her Mother’s Voice” is sad, but it is not a tragedy for it suggests remembered happiness.

Did W. Q. O. sometimes fear to lose his wife?

Mr Arthur Gilbey “sat” for the young man, a failed painter for the old one, and a musical friend for the girl, who played the whole time that she was sitting.

1889.

“The Young Duke” had a great success; of course, it was criticized; it is the critic’s job to pick holes, but that painters admired it is shown by the fact that the R.A. hanging committee displaced Leighton from his customary position in the “big room” (Gallery III) and put “Orchardson” there. Someone said, “It is the finest picture of the year,” to which an authority on art answered, “No, it is rather the finest picture of the age.”

From a letter:

I once asked my Father if Art should be didactic, and if subject were important, and he told me—I do not remember his exact words but only the sense—“that fine art must be fine in subject as well as in manner, that a purposeless picture could not be fine in the full sense of the word; and that what most appealed to him personally was the dramatic moment.” Witness Napoleon, the fallen hero at the moment of his last farewell to France, the scene of his glory; the two “Mariage de Convenance,” “The First Cloud,” “The Social Eddy,” “The Challenge,” “The Queen of the Swords,” “The Enigma,” “Voltaire”—indeed, I cannot find one without human interest, often intense.

Truly the still life is beautiful—the roses are even sweet-scented, one would think, they are so real—but is not this beauty a comment on the lack of spiritual beauty in the human figures—the vapid duke, the wine-flushed friends and toadies celebrating his twenty-first birthday?

Another criticism was that the faces were well alike; I remarked on this to my Father, who said:

“They appear alike because of the wigs; look closely and you will see that they are all different.”

I looked and no two were alike.

My Mother’s notes:

Tuke had considerable histrionic gifts, and so was a favourite model, he could take any pose required—like Mrs Keene, another favourite. He had a very good opinion of himself, he had been half over the world as a sailor, could tell a good story and think a little. One day he remarked:

“It is wonderful how you bring out beauty in a commonplace cup and saucer,” indicating the one W. Q. O. was painting, and another time: “Mr Orchardson, I could make an honest living coming behind you and picking up the things you lose.”

“Honest!” laughed my Father.

French papers say “The Young Duke” is an English scene. The cloth for wine is correct for those days, the tables being only rough boards. Ruffled wigs were said to be insufficiently aristocratic—but it was the end of a banquet in wine-drinking days.

1890.

“On the North Foreland” is not exactly dramatic, but it has human interest; a young girl (myself) in the act of enjoying the world, “so new and all,” the sunny clouds, the sparkling sea, the gay little wind blowing her hat and her skirts in such a lively manner.

The scene is on the cliffs between Westgate and Epple Bay, where my Father often walked with us, and where I was often rendered serious and silent by the intensity of my enjoyment—which, I suppose, suggested the picture.

One day my Mother called to me to put on my “lilac dress” and go to “Titumy” (as she and I always called him), as he wanted to paint me. I hurried and was soon in the studio, full of excitement.

“What is it to be, and why do you want me?”

My Father told me “you will see,” and showed me where to stand and how, but I was shy and gawky, and consequently a very bad model. However, the head was soon finished. I remember my Father pulling my hair in a wind-blown fashion and complaining that it was too lank, and I complained of the awkward position I had to stand in.

“You are supposed to be leaning against the wind, you know,” he said, to which I replied, “That’s all very well, but there isn’t any wind in here and I shall fall over backwards.”

However, he only kept me leaning back for a few minutes at a time—it was marvellous how quickly he saw what he wanted and then said, “All right,” and I stood at ease while he worked. After a little he would say “Now try again,” and I would resume my difficult posture.

In a few days he got his sketching materials, and we went to the cliffs for the background and there I actually stood exactly as in the picture, with the wind almost blowing me over the cliff—just as Punch’s caricature suggests.

We had a little argument about the title; my Father said, “On the South Foreland,” and I at once said, “Oh! no, let it be North Foreland.” He said, “But you are dark, so South is more appropriate.”

“No! No!” I cried, “I am of the North, and I hate the South—hate it; the North is so much nicer and lovelier and better every way, I couldn’t bear to be associated with the South.”

My Father gave way, remarking sympathetically: “Well, if you feel like that! And the North is kindlier than the South.”

About this time, a little earlier I think, my Father started a picture of myself with two younger brothers rigging up a toy boat on the sea-shore, an absolutely charming thing; but unfortunately he went up to London for some other work and when he came down to Westgate again we had all “grown out of the picture” he said, so it was never more than half begun, just the three heads.

Orchardson on his election as R.A. had sent a temporary diploma picture, “Reveller”; it was not considered sufficiently representative of his work. After many reminders, the President and Council at last sent, in January 1888, a really cross letter, to which he replied as follows:

This picture was “On the North Foreland,” and was accepted as suitable, and is now hanging in the Diploma Gallery, where it shines like a gem.

1890.

The Uffizi Gallery invited Orchardson to paint his portrait. He did so, and it was marvellously good, but he made one mistake—he used only one mirror instead of two, so of course saw himself the wrong way round. I asked him why, and he said he supposed he had been lazy, and had not thought the matter important.

1891.

Of the “Sir Walter Gilbey,” I know nothing unfortunately, except that it was always in demand for exhibitions. Lady Gilbey was worried about her hair in her portrait, and asked her husband’s advice, which he gave very cheerfully:

“Buy anything you like, my dear, buy anything you like,” much to my parents’ amusement.

1891.

When a certain sitter came for his first sitting he was rather a fine-looking man with grey hair; when he returned his hair was black; he had, in the interval, married a young wife; it was somewhat disconcerting to the painter, who had to rearrange his ideas.

1891.

One day I went into the studio on my return from school, to greet my Father; he was just putting the finishing touches to a picture of a young man and a young woman sitting on a sofa together.

After examining it for some time I asked, “But whatever is it? Are they quarrelling? Or has he proposed or been refused? Or does he want to propose but feels afraid?”

“I don’t know,” answered my Father, “it might be any of these things, it is an enigma.”

“And the title?”

“Well—I suppose—yes—it had better be called ‘An Enigma.’ ”

1892.

Orchardson was again attracted by Napoleon, this time the fallen hero living his greatness over again, in the sadness of St. Helena.

In a reply to a remark about the cruelty of that imprisonment, my Father said, “Yes, it was cruelly carried out, but, after all, the exile to so distant an island was a very great compliment; moreover, it was the only thing to do, anywhere closer risked a second Elba. But a great man should have been treated greatly.”

The maps in the picture are the genuine ones; W. Q. O. hunted the British Museum, the South Kensington, and many shops, and was finally advised to try Stanford’s. Which he did, and Mr Stanford himself took him to a store-cellar and, climbing a ladder, produced a dusty bundle, which proved to be the very thing—Napoleon’s maps of his campaigns.

A friend of Mr Pettie’s sat for the figure of Napoleon, a Mr Gregory Jones from Iquiqui, who, my Father said, was so like Napoleon that it was almost difficult not to paint a portrait of the model.

1894.

In June 1893 my Father gave a ball in the studio for my “coming-out” party, some 350 people. Of course, I had a new frock for the occasion, and my Mother chose a white “grenadine,” or some such thing. I like neither white nor flummeries on myself, so what was my surprise some days later at being told by my Mother to put on my ball dress and go to the studio to be painted. Another surprise awaited me in the studio: my Father told me to stand up against a white screen he had put up.

“A white dress, a white background, and my dark head! How on earth are you going to do it?” I exclaimed.

“That’s exactly the problem,” answered my Father as he started work. “Turn your nut a bit more. Your head is just like a nut—I never knew before how like. One has to draw a thing to know what it is like. And do you know you are very like me in the drawing of your head? That’s a thing I never knew before. People who don’t draw, don’t see—at least, not properly.”

“How can you talk and work at the same time?” said I.

“Oh! it’s quite easy when you know how, and I wanted to make you look rather less solemn and severe. But we had better get the Old Lady to read to us.”

So my Mother read aloud without, however, altering the severity of my face apparently, for Punch put a dagger in my hand instead of a fan, and the caption underneath read, if I remember rightly, “Who is she going to kill next?”

After a few sittings we went to Scotland for the summer holidays, and when we came back my Father complained of my sunburn, and had to wait some months till I attained what he called a “London complexion.”

1894.

Sir James Dewar, the inventor or discoverer of cordite, liquid air, solid hydrogen, and other puzzles to the unscientific mind, sat next, a restless but charming personality who became a lifelong friend. He carried bits of cordite in his pocket, and brought jars of liquid air, and showed off all the wonders with the delight of a schoolboy. He invited W. Q. O. to his “workshop” in Albemarle Street, which interested him immensely; as did the evening séances to which he and my Mother were often invited.

Prof. Dewar wrote to ask for “P. V.” tickets for the Master of Peterhouse and Mrs Porter, his wife; he adds, “Have been hard at work and have found out a new fact about bodies cooled to the temperature of liquid air [?] they nearly all become luminous in the dark after the action of light, in other words, Phosphorescent.”

Mr Joseph had a little gallery, and while he was ill one of his great pleasures was to sit there with his wife and discuss the pictures. After he became blind he continued this habit, and one day he said to Orchardson that the gallery was not complete without a work from his brush—the portraits of Mrs Joseph and “The Joseph Family” were hung in the drawing-room—and he wanted something with flowers in it.

My Father was deeply touched by this trust in his skill, this proof of friendship, and painted “In the conservatory.” When I saw it in the studio I remarked on the sadness of painting for a blind man, and then added some shy word in praise of the exquisite beauty of the little picture, and my Father answered:

“Yes, most sad, and, of course, one painted one’s best just because he would never see it. I painted that with my heart’s blood. But I think that as he knows my work well, perhaps he will see it quite clearly in his mind’s eye, with his wife’s detailed description, and her hand guiding his over the picture as she always does.”

Photo Henry Dixon & Son
LORD KELVIN, 1899
By kind permission of the Royal Society.

1895.

Monsieur Léon Gauchez was a Belgian, six feet two inches and gaunt, who became a Parisian and editor of L’Art, his pseudonym being Paul Leroi; he was an enthusiastic admirer of Orchardson from early days, and became a devoted friend, often visiting London for the express purpose of seeing him. When Monsieur Gauchez was talking he pursed his lips and folded his arms across his chest energetically, exactly as in the portrait, which was so like as to seem almost living. His conversation was as interesting, as vivid, almost violent, as his letters, which I intended to publish, but unfortunately I cannot find the owners of the copyrights, so must paraphrase—a poor substitute.

Orchardson’s foreign reputation seems to have been made in Lille, in 1881, with “Hard Hit” and “Mrs Winchester Clowes,” and no doubt Monsieur Gauchez quickened the interest in the still rising painter by an article on him in L’Art.

About 1881, Monsieur Gauchez told my Father of an interesting criticism or appreciation spoken to him by an art friend. “Historical subjects,” he said, “should have in France not half the success of subjects taken from human passion as is ‘Hard Hit.’ I have no words to tell you exactly how great is your success in Lille. A friend of mine did judge admirably ‘Hard Hit’ in my presence when he said: ‘Cela n’est pas un tableau de genre. Le genre n’a jamais que des succès plus ou moins passagers. Ceci c’est de la Comédie Humaine, du drame humain prit sur le vif par un penseur profond qui est un merveilleux observateur qui scrute admirablement le cœur humain dans ses moindres replis et qui est en outre un vrai maître peintre.’ ”

Monsieur Gauchez wrote rather often, sometimes asking for a picture for the Salon or for permission to reproduce one, and my Father’s answers being difficult to get he frequently addressed himself to my Mother.

Monsieur Gauchez was expected in London in the summer of 1890, but his brother died, leaving him an unhappy man, the last of his “modest” name, as he himself called it. From a letter written at this time, it would appear that my Father had long promised to paint his portrait, but had forgotten about it or perhaps merely delayed. Monsieur Gauchez intended to pay for it, but my Father made it a gift, and when at last it was painted and given, the recipient’s delight and gratitude at the honour paid him by the man whom he considered the greatest artist of the day, were both touching and charming.

Monsieur Gauchez was evidently a man of very deep affections, for the following year he wrote most heartbrokenly of the death of his old friend the great artist Delauney; which would not concern W. Q. O. except sympathetically, but that Delauney’s last happiness was listening to Monsieur Gauchez translating a letter from him praising Delauney’s work. Delauney sent a message of thanks and pride.

In March 1892, Monsieur Gauchez wrote a very short note saying he was very sorry to be without an answer to his letter, as everything was prepared for W. Q. O.’s knighthood.

Apparently the unanswered letter was completely lost—we were moving from Westgate about this time—for the Legion of Honour was not conferred till 1895. Evidently, however, the explanation was satisfactory, for in June 1892 Monsieur Gauchez sent a present of Bourboule Water in order to have the pleasure of helping to cure his friend.

My Father was suffering from indigestion at this time and Monsieur Gauchez was very concerned. He dined with us several times on this visit to London and was as always very interesting, though his fluent English was difficult to understand—he did not learn English till he was sixty.

[Draft letter]:

[Apparently to Monsieur Gauchez. Draft letter]:

In 1896 “Madame Récamier” was sent to the Paris Salon and Monsieur Gauchez offered his portrait to be admired, though he preferred obscurity for himself. The picture was a marvel he said, but the model not at all; wherein he did himself an injustice.

Mme Récamier was paid the compliment of being allowed to come late into the Salon, where it had an enormous success.

On my remarking to my Father that France as well as England noticed the yellow tinge in his pictures, he told me that “it was the effect of sunlight or even light.” He looked very thoughtful and people who know his work will remember that there is no yellow tinge in his later work.

1897.

On going to the studio to look at “Trouble,” I asked if it were disgrace or misfortune—the wife shows compassion.

My Father replied, “I think it is money trouble.”

“Has he been cheating?”

“No, just loss I should say.”

“But how can money, mere money, cause such trouble?”

“Well, he can’t give to his wife as usual—that would cause him distress.”

My Mother notes of this picture: “A scene, even two—in ‘Mammon & Co.,’ by Benson, illustrates this picture wonderfully.” The picture did not illustrate the book which (I think) was written afterwards.

1898.

The “Lord Peel” and the “Mrs Pattison” were hung pendant in the fourth room at the R.A.—I forget what was between them. Everyone was praising and admiring “Lord Peel,” the Speaker, the great man. But Agnew came up to W. Q. O. and, taking him by the arm, took him in front of the two pictures and said: “ ‘The Lord Peel’ is fine, certainly—magnificent, but that one,” pointing to “Mrs Pattison,” “that one is an Old Master.”

My modest Father blushed deeply as he told us this; he never repeated to us (except, of course, to his wife) any of the compliments he received, but his pleasure in this greatest of all compliment—“Old Master” and from a man who knew—overcame for once his shy reserve. And the pleasure was the greater in that Agnew confirmed his own opinion that the quiet old lady was a far finer work than the important Speaker.

An old M.P., looking at Lord Peel’s portrait at one of Mr Gully’s parties, said in an unconsciously awed whisper: “That’s exactly how the Speaker looked when he admonished the Cambrian Railway Directors.”

1899.

Old Sir Peter Russell lay dying and his still-young wife came with an introduction from Lady Moore, our neighbour and great friend, to beg the “kindest-hearted artist there is” to do a little drawing of her husband in bed, and thereafter paint a portrait “for her to love” when she was a widow. W. Q. O. demurred, he did not paint portraits from memory, but in the end gave way to a pretty woman’s tears.

So he went to the dying man’s bedside and made a sketch of the fine old head with the tousled picturesque grey hair. Two or three weeks later a note arrived to say that Sir Peter had completely recovered, but would like to go on with the in-memoriam portrait. So he came to sit, brushed and curled, and all the picturesqueness trimmed out of him.

However, the portrait was a success, at any rate, Lady Russell wrote some years later, when she was really a widow: “I am more than ever charmed and in love with your beautiful portrait of my husband—he sits there as in life, with that lovely gold frame around him. I always feel so very good after looking at it.”

Lady Russell was a dear, and beautifully dressed; she took me to Ranelagh and elsewhere.

Some years later a portrait was wanted of a certain Lord-Lieutenant, who, however, died before it could be executed; could the artist see his way to paint it from a photograph? W. Q. O. could not and told the following tale:

“I knew a man in Edinburgh who received a call from a fellow who wanted a portrait of his dead father.

“ ‘Have you a photograph or a drawing?’ asked the artist.

“ ‘No,’ said the visitor sadly, ‘that is just the trouble, we have nothing whatsoever and we want something.’

“ ‘But,’ said the artist, ‘how can I possibly paint a man I have never seen, without even knowing what he was like?’

“ ‘I can easily tell you that—he had fair hair, blue eyes and was a fine looking man.’

“The artist being hard up finally agreed, and when the portrait was finished sent for the owner to come and see it.

“The son’s face lighted up with pleasure as he looked at it for some time quite silently. Then he sighed and shook his head sadly, saying: ‘How like! How very like—but—how changed!’ ”

My Father got a little shock when his family asked if the change was for the better or the worse, then answered: “The story sayeth not.”

1899.

My Mother has the following note in “Do you remember?”

I have already told of the wonderful eyes.

1899.

The “Lord Crawford” was not quite finished when it was wanted for presentation, but W. Q. O. let it go—the centenary would never occur again and he liked Lord Crawford.

The “precious” book was one of the celebrated old metal-covered and jewelled books, belonging to the Crawford Library, which I believe is now more or less dispersed.

[E. O.’s Diary]:

At that time few people knew of Queen Victoria’s extreme cleverness, fewer still suspected that she had much to do with government; she was loved and venerated more as the Great Mother than as the Ruler of “her people.” My Father, therefore, determined to paint her as the woman of intense family affections and not as the Great Queen. So he invented the little scene (which very likely actually occurred) of the small great-grandson presenting a bouquet to his great-grandmother, with the two Princes of the intervening generations looking on with fatherly and grandfatherly pride.

On Sir Writer Gilbey objecting that little Prince Edward was not a Past President of the Royal Agricultural Society, my Father laughingly replied: “No, but he can be a future one, you must elect him.”

When the little Prince came for his first sitting he was escorted by an equerry as well as a nurse; afterwards, finding no doubt the house a civilized one, and the artist a gentleman and not a wild Bohemian, he came with just an under-nurse, a girl from the Sandringham estate, with a very strong Norfolk accent.

My Father received Prince Edward at the front door and was himself received with a handshake en Prince; then the Prince suddenly became a little boy, put his hand confidingly in his host’s, and said in friendly fashion, “Which way do we go now?”

On reaching the studio he looked round him in surprise: “Oh! but,” said he, “you have a much bigger nursery than I have.”

The Duchess of York (now Queen Mary) had written through a lady-in-waiting that the child could stay for two hours, but that she was afraid he would not sit quietly for longer than an hour and would then require a rest. Luckily ten minutes or a quarter of an hour sufficed my Father for a good view, then “What about a rest now?” and the little boy would climb down from the “throne,” run to his nurse, clamber on her knee and have a good cuddle—just the same as any other little boy. “A dear little chap,” said my Mother; “a fine little fellah,” said my Father.

One day, after there had been a long interval between the sittings, he came in a knickerbocker sailor suit, “in which he looked very nice,” my Mother reports, but, of course, the change necessitated borrowing the frock, which, of course, caused more delay in an already delayed work.

The Duke of York (now King George V) came alone. I remember seeing him leave alone and walk across the street entirely unattended, to Prince Edward of Saxe Weimar’s opposite; a small, very well dressed and inconspicuous gentleman.

My Father found him shy at first, but fishing talk having been started, all went well; two enthusiastic fishermen always have plenty to say. One day my Father mentioned that he was going fishing and the Duke said: “You are lucky. For me there is nothing in prospect, but the laying of foundation stones,” from which my Father gathered that to be a private gentleman and not a King was the Duke’s real idea of happiness. However, the Duke went fishing at last and sent my Father a half a salmon from Balmoral.

When he returned to sit, my Father thanked him again, having already written, of course, and asked if he had had good sport.

The Duke replied, “Yes, and that was not a ghillie fish I sent you—I caught it myself,” and proceeded to give the story of the catching.

When Prince George was engaged to Princess May, Sir Walter Gilbey gave a big luncheon party in their honour and my parents were amongst the guests, likewise the Duchess of Teck and I do not know who else.

My Father had a talk with the Duchess whom he described as “the jolliest of old ladies, thumping her stick on the floor as she laughed uproariously.” Then he was presented to Princess May (now Queen Mary) and they walked round the garden together.

“And what was she like?”

“Well, she was most serious and solemn; she, of course, spoke first and I answered when spoken to, then the conversation became interesting and I forgot Court manners and we got on swimmingly; her face lighted up with a delightful smile. I think royalties rather enjoy being treated as human beings.”

To return to the studio. The Prince of Wales (afterwards King Edward VII) came next with an equerry, in the very plain, not to say shabby, single-horse brougham that he used to obtain privacy. Of course, my Father received him at the door and escorted him to the studio, the equerry following meekly. But the Prince soon thawed and conversation became lively, the host being allowed to sit, but the equerry being kept standing “like a flunkey” as my Father said.

My Father was very widely read, but he found the Prince his equal, except about art, and described him as a very clever even wise man of the world with suave manners and a hearty jolly laugh.

On leaving it was old Sir Stanley Clarke’s duty to open the studio door while my Father was talking to and escorting the Prince; but the Prince was in such a hurry and so quick in his movements that he got to the door first and opened it for himself, leaving the poor old equerry toiling apologetically in the rear.

The Princess of Wales came once, I think, to see the picture; on my asking my Father if she was really pretty he replied, “Yes, she is pretty—at least, very pretty for a princess.” Curiously enough, exactly the same remark he had made to little Chattie Clow in his youth.

Having lately refused the Presidency of the R.A. for the sake of privacy it was rather “hard lines” (a favourite expression of W. Q. O.’s) having that privacy violated.

If it was difficult to get the lesser lights to sit, it proved very nearly impossible to get the Big Light at all. However, the persuasions of the heir to the throne combined with those of a much-beloved son proved successful, and my Father not only obtained the sitting, but permission to see the Queen’s private rooms at Windsor. Of these he chose the long corridor, outside her dining-room, where she often sat, in a special chair with a rod to raise and lower it at will.

On making a sketch my Father found he had chosen a place where two white busts, of the Queen and the Duchess of Kent, came into view. His love of accuracy and the extreme difficulty of introducing them successfully caused him to include them in his picture.

WINDSOR CASTLE 1899, 1900
The Four Generations.
By kind permission of the Owners, the Royal Agricultural Society.

I am sorry that copyright and my non-success in finding Lord Edward Pelham Clinton forbid me publishing his letters. They are very friendly and are full of a quaint Court secrecy quite unknown to us humbler mortals.

I could only get a very meagre description of the half-hour he had with the Queen from my Father; she had, he said, a pleasant voice, a dignified, aloof, but gracious manner, and beautiful hands of whose beauty she was quite conscious; the extreme smallness of the Queen’s stature impressed him—I fancy he had not before realized the truth of the Scots saying, “Guid gear gang’s in sma’ bouk”—“good material goes into small bulk.”

My Father received much kindness and hospitality from the officials at Windsor Castle while making his sketch, my Mother also when she went with him, as she usually did. He needed it, too, for he was suffering severely from neuritis the whole time he was painting this big picture, and at one time he almost thought he would have to give up, especially when the pain began to appear in his right arm as well. It was painful to watch the effort he made to keep going, but with his usual courage he managed to continue and finished the work in time for the 1900 Exhibition.

The picture was hung in the place of honour at the end of the Big Room (III), which, however, was not such a good light as the other two lesser places of honour at the sides. It did not look as well in the Academy as in the studio; lighting alters a picture very much, and I think perhaps Orchardson’s delicate colours required more light—I know he preferred either of the other two places.

[E. O.’s diary]:

Aug. 12th, 1900. The F.G. was in the studio the other day when I went up to town, and looked awfully fine—so much better than in the R.A., where it looked disappointing; you could only see it from one point of view.

My Father painted the Prince of Wales full face, with one eye slightly larger and the eyebrow a little more raised than the other. I have since seen a photograph in precisely the same position, and the portrait was an exact likeness. The Prince, however, did not like the slight defect to show and asked my Father to alter it. Of course, the subject had to obey orders, and much against his will altered the face to a profile view. The first head showed the Prince as he really was, wise, shrewd, humorous and exceedingly clever; the second head, in my opinion, lost this characterization, and though Orchardson could not paint a bad portrait yet this was by no means one of his best, though I think it had been before the alteration.

My Father was in great pain and tired; the difficulty of getting sittings, the difficulty of borrowing the Royal clothes—like other people the Royal folks wanted to wear them—and the constant “fussation” made my Father very glad when the picture was finished. But to his surprise that was by no means the end—copyright troubles then began.

Two, even three, events occurred in my Father’s life that I leave untouched out of consideration for people still alive. Two of these had an immense and deleterious effect on his happiness and consequently on his health, but his work does not appear to have been affected. No Life of Orchardson is complete without them.

1900.

The “Parting of the Ways” was painted at Hawley House in the drawing-room. The window overlooks the garden (perhaps I should say overlooked, for most of the house has since been burnt down); the roses were gathered in the garden; the carpet was W. Q. O.’s favourite Aubusson that “lived” in the drawing-room; I myself sat for part of the nose, eyes and mouth, and I made most of the frock, copying it from an old Empire one that had lost its freshness. What a hunt I had in London trying to get a net like the old one; apparently it was no longer made so I had to use an ordinary modern net, which never hung right, although I tried, and a dressmaker after me—the mesh was different.

One day my Father and I were wandering round the fascinating half-neglected garden and up and down the wilderness; looking at it from where I write now—the half arid Orange Free State and at a distance of twenty years—it seems to me a paradise. No garden ever grew before so many flowers all together as that memory garden of mine, spring flowers and summer flowers and autumn flowers all flowering together in one gorgeous blooming. And then the soft delicious greens and browns of winter.

And roses—my Father’s favourite flower—“perfect,” he said, “in form and colour and scent, the three qualities required to make a perfect flower.” We had a row of standard roses, each in its own little bed, on either side of the wide gravelled path that led from the house to the wilderness gates and past the old pigeon-house built in Bloody Mary’s time (1554, 1555 and 1556 are the various dates given).

My Father and I went through the old blue iron gates into the wilderness and sauntered along the mossy path, my Father pointing out the splendid remains of the old Spanish chestnuts and remarking on their beauty compared with horse-chestnuts, “which were like cabbages, too bunchy to be beautiful,” no drawing; then the old yews claimed his attention, and we remembered the avenues of ancient yews at Lethen where we had walked together. Copper beeches, he said, were unnatural and therefore ugly; oaks and Scotch firs he thought the finest of all trees, and the contrast of the graceful silver birch and the brilliant green of the rowans with the Scotch firs, grim and gaunt, “made” the beauty of Black Mount Forest where we had all spent happy days on our first holiday in Scotland.

Discussing natural beauties, we retraced our slow pleasant steps and came into the garden proper again and sauntered on till we came to a little tree-like bush, ten feet high or so, covered with flowers, white with purple splashes within, rather like a carnation from an artist’s point of view, though not from a botanist’s, I believe. The leaves were serrated, of a pale green, and the whole tree was of a most fairy-like grace and colour.

This little “carnation tree,” as we called it not knowing its real name, was one of my Father’s favourites, ranking next to the roses, I think. He always paused beside it, and now we paused together, in our usual friendly understanding silence.

“Titumy,” I said in my sudden way, “Titumy, do you know what I am thinking?”

“No,” said he, half smiling.

“Well,” I hurried on a little breathlessly for fear of shyness silencing me, “you know that little picture you are painting—it—it is just like this lovely carnation tree—in colour and grace and feeling. I always think of them together.”

My Father blushed and thanked me for the “pretty compliment,” but I hastily disclaimed any intention of paying compliments and said I was only telling the truth. At which he blushed again. And to this day I cannot see even an engraving of the “Parting of the Ways” and several other pictures of the Hawley time without seeing in my mind’s eye the beautiful “carnation tree” that my Father so admired.

1901.

The doves came from somewhere forgotten and I amused myself taming them to eat out of my hand as my Father had done with the pigeons at Ivyside. My Father stood near by and enjoyed the pretty creatures. But one day he was not there and my Mother came out of the studio and said, “Wait a minute—Titumy wants to paint you feeding the doves.”

“All right. What frock am I to put on?”

“He wants the one you have.”

“This ugly old thing,” I exclaimed, feeling rather put out at the idea of going down to posterity in my old gardening gown of a tiny shepherd’s-plaid check.

However, there was nothing to do but submit, which I did, feeling that artists had queer tastes. But the gown in the picture is charming and tones in with the soft grey of the doves; some effect of light, I suppose, changed the colour—or was it the magic in the painter’s vision?

On the second day of the sittings my Father asked me to stand at the doves’ perch with my arms up; but he decided that the scene on the lawn was the best and we went back there.

1902.

Once long ago when they were in Paris my Father and Mother were invited to a dinner-party which was held in the garden under the trees about sunset; my Father was much struck by the picturesqueness of the scene and immediately thought of a picture. For years such a picture simmered in his mind, he spoke of it occasionally, but it did not take shape until he went to Hyères in 1901. He admired the umbrella pines so much that he sent for sketching materials and made a sketch.

Then the dinner-party idea presented itself again and in searching for a dramatic scene Cæsar Borgia came to his mind, suggested possibly by the extremity of contrast between our own friendly and kindly Royal Family whom he had lately been painting and The Poisoner of other days. It will be remembered that Cæsar Borgia always invited his intended but unsuspecting victim to a banquet and then to drink wine with him. The man who was invited to drink knew well the fate awaiting him, a poisoned cup—or worse if he dared to insult his ruler by refusing.

In the picture the other guests have overturned their chairs in their haste to escape for the moment, and the Borgia is left quietly contemplating his victim.

My Mother wished the picture to be called “Cæsar Borgia” in order to explain it clearly, but my Father insisted that “The Borgia” was sufficient and that everyone knew all about him. He never reflected that few people knew “all about everything” in the remarkable way he did.

Though so beautiful, “The Borgia” was difficult to sell owing to the “awfulness” of the subject. One dealer wrote that he would like to buy it, but dared not as dealers are the slaves of the amateurs; he suggested that the Chantrey Fund might buy it and that then he could go and see it sometimes as it was in certain ways one of the most beautiful of all Orchardson’s pictures.

Another dealer, Mr Arthur Levi, whom my Father described in a letter of introduction as an “Art publisher, an Art enthusiast and a connoisseur,” must have had true insight, for in a letter he not merely describes the picture as superb, but adds, “It seems to me wonderful in its artistic expressiveness, as if it were the realization of an ideal which must long have occupied your soul until it took the shape we now see it in.”

Mr David Murray wrote that he had recommended “The Borgia” to Mr Wolff Harris when dining there.

So wrote my secretary Mother—my Father never would think of business, especially when he most needed the money—as now.

1903.

[E. O.’s diary]:

The picture was not really begun, but only thought of till 1903. A school friend of my sister sat—or rather posed—for Mrs Siddons, a little Jewess of twelve or so, quite absurdly like Mrs Siddons in face and with quite a little talent for reciting. In fact, she spent most of the time she was posing in reciting Shakespeare—and yet her school reports proclaimed her the dullest child in school, which she certainly cannot have been.

On my asking my Father for a list of the people, he said: “Burke, Sheridan, Kemble, Macklin, Sir Joshua Reynolds (in whose studio the scene is placed), Northcote, Mrs Jordaans and Le Flâneur.” In reply to my enquiry why he had not put in a real portrait instead of the Flâneur he said that there was always a Flâneur present at such gatherings, one of those fashionable nobodies who think so much of themselves and are so soon forgotten—the picture would not have been true to life without him. Sir David Murray sat for Reynolds and was much flattered at the resemblance.

1904.

“A Portrait of a Lady” painted this year reminds me of old Sant, R.A. He was painting Patti, and my Father went to see the portrait in Mr Sant’s studio; he criticized the hard lines in the face, particularly the lips. Mr Sant agreed, but said he could not help himself, the hard lines being the paint lines on Patti’s face; Patti had been painted at seven years old, she told him. Years before he had had trouble with Thalberg, but had asked her to give it up, saying, “When you are sitting to me kindly let me do all the painting!”

1904.

W. Q. O. was often compared to Sargent after the latter became the fashion, so that the following quotation from The Times is of some interest: “The ‘Sir Samuel Montagu’ reaches the highest possible point in art, and some of them [the critics] do not hesitate to say that this is a point which Sargent has not and probably never will reach.”

Sir Samuel Montagu (afterwards Lord Swaythling) himself wrote that “Mr. L. de Rothschild thought that you had not flattered me, but I prefer truth to flattery.” The committee wrote desiring to express their sincere thanks for the great obligation conferred upon them by his kindness in painting Sir Samuel’s portrait; as he only got one hundred and fifty pounds for this picture, described by Agnew as an Old Master, it was most certainly a great favour.

1904.

[Draft letter. Answer to the Bishop of Oxford’s portrait committee]:

[E. O.’s note: Quiller’s draft letter to the Bishop of Oxford]:

[To the Bishop of Oxford]:

[Draft letter to the Bishop of Oxford]:

1906.

Lady Younghusband was one of the Magniacs, with whom we were friends at Westgate; my Father flirted—more or less—with the witty Miss Magniac and, I think, painted her brother, Mr Herbert Magniac; to complete the friendship I went fishing for eels with a younger sister, and worms threaded on worsted. We all lost sight of each other for years and then met again at Hawley where another brother, Mr Oswald Magniac, had a house near ours, but in Sutton-at-Hone. We all renewed our friendships and fishing was indulged in again, this time for trout and with Mr Magniac and my Father as exponents. One of the brothers, all young, called my Father his “boy friend” on account of his youthfulness.

[Draft letter unsigned]:

[Draft letter unsigned]:

1909.

Mrs Mosscockle wrote at first that she was delighted with her portrait and sent some flowers as a small tribute to genius. Afterwards, however, she was not so pleased and sent the following letter:

Photo Fred Hardie
THE BORGIA, 1902
By kind permission of the Aberdeen Art Gallery.

My Father replied as follows, his writing being unusually strong:

He died before that opportunity came.

The Bystander allows me to quote their most excellent critique:

I find the following in W. Q. O.’s handwriting:

1909.

[Draft letter. From W. Q. O. to the Sir Lawrence Jenkins portrait committee]:

Sir Lawrence Jenkins wanted a replica of his portrait; W. Q. O. was unwilling to accede to this and disapproved of copies. I find the following amongst my Father’s notes:

In the end he gave in and allowed his son Charlie to do a copy under “the artist’s own directions,” and with his finishing touches; and Lady Jenkins wrote him a most grateful letter.

[Draft letter to the Editor of a Welsh paper; W. Q. O.’s handwriting]:

As my Father often quoted. Luckily he did not take this literally for his sons, though he did for his daughters; which is my excuse for mentioning myself again.

In 1904 I had the temerity to engage myself to a friend of my own, a Boer War officer twice mentioned in despatches, whom my strict parents had never seen, though they knew some of his sisters very well. I went to the studio in some trepidation to confess to my independence of thought, to South Africa and poverty, but of course was met with the utmost sympathy, which I had really expected; and was also met with an Early Victorian, not to say Turkish, lecture on the duties of wife and woman, which was much worse than anything that might have been anticipated. As I could not express disagreement without distressing the dear man, I fled as soon as I decently could.

Later on I asked my Father if he had written to my Hugh and he replied “no” apologetically and promised he would, with this result on his usual scrap of paper.

Another letter in pencil and very shaky writing is dated by my Mother April 1st, 1905. I do not know that either letter went:

After my Father’s desperate illness in March 1905, I rather wondered if I ought to go so far away, but both he and my Mother were convinced that it was no part of a daughter’s duty to remain at home with her parents, except under very unusual circumstances which did not exist in this case.

So my betrothed came home from South Africa and came to us at Hawley where he at once made great friends with my Mother and sister, but found the “great man” a little awesome, though charming and friendly.

We were married in London on October 14th. My Father drove with me to the church and neither of us spoke except once, when I asked if it would be very shocking to put my veil up because it was stifling me. He agreed it would be “all right,” and something in his voice made me fear he would faint. So I kept a careful watch over him, and when he had agreed that he was the giver-away of the bride, I turned round and whisperingly directed him to a chair close by. It must have been rather quaint, the bride looking after someone else, but how much easier it is than looking after one’s own affairs—no self-consciousness or shyness to be bothered with.

A little reception to a few relations and my own special friends—my Father was too delicate for more—and I passed out of my Father’s daily life to my own new one.

But the next day we “dropped in” to luncheon. “My daughter’s my daughter all the days of my life,” said my Father, as he put his dear arms round me, and what Mother does not welcome a daughter? They were both very flattered and pleased by our visit, they said. A gay luncheon of laughter and hidden tears.

Then we went to Scotland, where I received the following reassuring letter from my Mother:

Quolquhailzie—pronounced Kewhiley—was the unspellable Gaelic name.

My Father still retained his love of dogs, and after my marriage made a great pet of Fruach till some brute poisoned him in London. He bought this dog for me in the Highlands some years before, Scotch terriers being his favourites. At one time we had a beautiful greyhound at Hawley that matched the old garden, but it made itself such a nuisance chasing and killing other people’s cats, as well as our own, that it was given away.

My Father always said he could make friends with any dog, but had supposed a bull-dog would resist all blandishments and was unbribable, but one day when he was fishing he proved otherwise. He was walking along a narrow footpath by the river, looking for a likely fish, when suddenly he heard the rattle of a chain, and looking up, found himself confronted by a savage bull-dog, standing four-square in the path. He made a friendly remark, the dog growled in reply. What to do? To turn back was unthinkable, to go forward impossible.

“Ah! happy thought! Biscuits, bribery! But can a bull-dog be bribed?”

He pulled a luncheon biscuit out of his pocket, held it up for the dog’s inspection, then placed it on the path just within its reach. The dog nosed it, sniffed it, looked inquiringly at the donor, and finally picking it up, walked back to his kennel with an air of “Yes, all right, you have paid your way—pass on.”

My Father went safely by and thereafter every time he wanted to go that way, the same scene was enacted, the dog accepting a biscuit as toll, and allowing the giver to pass along the path it was supposed to guard.

Was the dog really bribed we wondered, or had it some vague notion that the briber had a right of way?

My Father detested lap dogs, especially fat ones. There was a man who made his living out of curing sick dogs, and made quite a name. He would not give the secret away, but at last he whispered confidentially, “I just tubs ’em for a couple o’ days or more and they comes out right as a trivet.”

How my Father laughed at the picture of the fat little wheezy, overfed dogs starving back to health under a tub!

[E. O.’s letters]:

My Father was working at “The Last Dance” at this time, and having been unable to get suitable professional models had made use of the family and Mr Macdonald. The violinist is quite recognizably my brother Ian, the man walking out of the room is my husband, but the others I cannot recognize in the very small print in Masterpieces of Orchardson, and forget at this distance of time.

The family dispersed finally before the completion of the picture, so it was never finished. The azalea was painted at Hawley.

The central figure in the vivid green dress is wonderful, and the whole picture—what there is of it—is most beautiful, but very sad. It does not suggest the last dance of the ball, but “Die Ende vom Lied”—the last song of life—the end of this life and a new and unknown one beginning. “The artistic purpose comes first,” said my Father once, on my asking which was the most important part of a picture, no doubt meaning in the carrying out of the idea. And this idea? Was it suggested by his own failing life?

He was once asked as to the meaning of one of his pictures, and he answered laughingly, “I think you had better ask the Browning Society,” as Browning said, when someone asked him the meaning of one of his poems! He always laughed at the “Browning Society” in Browning’s own lifetime, but I never heard what he thought of the poet’s work. He met both Browning and Tennyson more than once; the former, he said, was just a cheerful old gentleman, with no suggestion of deep or any other poetry about him, and something of a cheerful gossip, but the latter dressed and looked and behaved the part of poet to perfection.

In November my Mother wrote that my Father had been working in the garden as often as the “awful” weather permitted, and that he was always staying out too long and getting cold and chilled, without taking harm, however. He always said that one should not allow one’s spirits to be affected by the weather, but, after all, the weather affects one’s body, and the body one’s spirits, especially in a delicate person. He was in that depressed condition that always follows convalescence, and could not make up his mind whether to stay at Hawley or go to town. He was despondent, too, over his work, the inability to get suitable models worrying him as always.

A pleasant honour, however, came at this time to cheer him. He had been a member of the Society of Portrait Painters since 1897, and now received the following letters from the Hon. John Collier and Sir L. Alma Tadema:

[Draft letter]:

On November 26th my Mother wrote to me from Hawley:

The unanimous vote and Mr Collier’s promise to do all the work finally decided him and he accepted with very considerable pleasure.

In December my Mother reported: “The weather is foggy, damp and as wretched as it can be. Papa has been able to work but on Friday he did not feel so well. I had been up to town. I never know what he does to tire himself when I am away for a few hours.”

It was always the same, when his wife was away he wandered about in a state of lostness until she came home again; he tried to work, but never succeeded for long; he could not read much without hurting his eyes; fishing and golf were the only two things that made a wifeless condition bearable, and they were not always obtainable at a moment’s notice. Many a little jaunt did my Mother give up in order to stay with him.

Late in December my husband and I came home and spent a happy month, then we went off to South Africa. My Father and I said a cheerful good-bye in the Portland Place studio. I would not let him come to the door—“only three years, Titumy,” said I; “only three years, lassie,” said he—and I fled, leaving him standing in the middle of the studio. A little small treasure had been confided to my keeping and I did not dare allow myself to feel anything so deeply as to endanger that comforting hope. Only three years! More than twenty-three years have gone and I am still an exile in the same place, no longer a colony, “a second England,” but a half-loyal Dominion. I never saw either of my parents again—truly man proposes but God disposes.

My Father standing in the studio, fine, strong-willed, self-controlled—that was the last sight I had of him; it remains clear now as then. My Mother and I parted at the station—but that does not concern this book.

And now I rely on my Father’s few letters, and my Mother’s weekly ones which form to me an interesting diary, but her pleasant way of discussing my affairs makes them too diffuse for other people; she and I exchanged weekly letters till she died of cancer in 1917.