And upon the onerous occasions of the varnishing days when the positions on the line were supposed to be the right of every exhibitor, these and other leaders in the world of art would often “stand by” even when some incensed young gentleman—these were usually young gentlemen—would go the length of removing his picture in a four-wheeler.
Many were the humorous incidents that used to be told to me! A favourite and out-spoken assistant was once asked what he thought of the position of a small picture which was being tried above a larger one; to which his reply was: “If you ask me, Sir, I think it looks like a tom-tit on a round of beef.” Apparently the directors thought so too for the picture was removed and hung in a corner, or perhaps in the balcony above the Central Court—a place even less coveted by the ambitious.
Little however did I know of these prickly passages, specially at that momentous first opening, when a kind supporter of the new enterprise presented me with a beautiful old brocade dress in which I took my share of receiving the crowds of visitors at the entrance of the Hall: and I don’t think that, when the varnishing day was past, the two directors bothered their heads much about the prickly passages or even about the Press opinions. Joe’s optimism was always irrepressible and when his task at the New Gallery was over, he would turn, on the following day—with something perhaps of relief—to one of the many other sides of his full life.
CHAPTER VIII
DRAMATIC WORK AND MANAGEMENT
It must have been somewhere about this period that the first impetus was, funnily enough, given to Joe’s dramatic career by a request from our dear friend, Ellen Terry, that I should make an English adaptation for her from the famous French play of Frou-Frou.
The thing was done, and played in Glasgow and other Northern towns under the title of Butterfly, and great fun we had over our first initiation into the mysteries of dress-rehearsals—not always perhaps quite so funny in the more responsible circumstances of later years, though it is a form of patient work electrified by the gambling spirit, which never lost its attraction for Joe.