Twenty Years of My Life

by Douglas Brooke Wheelton Sladen

And it was nothing more.”

The cartoon was received with universal acclaim, but the general public—quorum pars fui—did not bother as to who the artist was. I did not know Phil at the time. He was just back from Australia, where he had been working for the Sydney Bulletin.

Phil May had the head of a mediæval jester, and was fond of drawing himself in the cap and bells.

Another black-and-white humorist of a different type who was with us just as much was Dudley Hardy, whose satirical sketches of ballet girls and their admirers filled the periodicals of the day, obscuring Dudley Hardy’s claim as an artist. He was a son of the well-known marine painter, T. B. Hardy, and was lured from doing the really admirable work with which his friends are familiar, by the fatal popularity of his theatrical caricatures. It was long before he could make up his mind to break away from that and do himself justice in painting. His sister married a very great friend of ours, a water-colour painter of extraordinary cleverness and charm, Frank Richards. We have many of his pictures, mostly impressionist water-colours, which prove the heights to which Richards could have risen if he had continued to have the leisure to which he was born. He might have done very well in black-and-white too. He could have come nearer to Phil May than most people, for he too had caught the spirit of Japan in the simplicity and bold curves of his drawing; and he had considerable humour. His limpidity and the charm of his colouring were especially shown in his paintings of Venice.

His portrait of Dudley Hardy is simply admirable, for Dudley, with his whimsical smile and jaunty way of wearing his hat, looks like a Parisian notable.

For some years we saw more of Reginald Cleaver than any other artist. Cleaver was at that time the favourite artist of the Graphic, as well as a regular contributor to Punch. He was excellent in catching likenesses, and his crisp and beautiful handiwork made his pictures of passing events most attractive. The Graphic always sent him to the most important functions, such as royal weddings. He hated this work, because he was far too gentlemanly and too shy to push, and the people in charge of royal functions seemed to take a pleasure in putting every disadvantage they could in the way of the artists and journalists who had to immortalise the occasion for their fellow-countrymen. The artist was expected to stand behind the organ or anywhere else provided he was sufficiently out of sight; whether he could see or not was of very little consideration. But one day Fate overtook the autocrat who used to browbeat the Press. It was in the days when the late King was Prince of Wales, and his brother, the Duke of Edinburgh, had just become a German reigning prince as Prince of Saxo-Coburg Gotha. Cleaver, who was posted where he could not see the procession as it entered, imagined that the Duchess of Edinburgh as a reigning princess would take precedence of the Princess of Wales, and gave her precedence in his picture in the Daily Graphic. Before ten o’clock the next morning a messenger from Marlborough House arrived at the Graphic office to know the meaning of this libel, and the editor explained that the artist had been placed in a position where he could not see the Princess. The Princess was furious. She attached no blame to the artist, but she sent for the autocrat and gave him to understand that there must be no more accidents of this kind, and from that day forward there was a great change in the way in which artists were treated at royal functions.

We spent several of our summer holidays together. Cleaver’s sketches of famous people at historical functions will have a permanent value. He had no rival in fidelity and charm in this kind of work. In recent years the world has seen too little of his work owing to his being so much abroad. He is the elder brother of Ralph Cleaver, the well-known political caricaturist.

Holland Tringham, a very good-looking and well-bred man, of whom I saw a good deal at that time, had a battle royal with a millionaire duchess over a similar question. He went down to represent one of the chief illustrated papers at a great ball she was giving at her country house. When he got there, he was received with scant ceremony, but began his work. When supper-time came, the housekeeper arrived to tell him that he would find his supper in the still room. He showed her the beginnings of his sketch—and he was a brilliant artist—and said, “Take this to her Grace and tell her that if she does not come and fetch me to supper with her guests, I shall tear it up, and go home.”

Her Grace came, took him to supper, and introduced him to her friends galore, and the picture appeared. Of course, Tringham was very sure of his position as an artist with the paper, or he would not have risked the chance of being sacrificed on the altar of the offended duchess. I should like to have heard what the housekeeper told her.

There has not been so much of this snobbery lately among hostesses; the race for publicity having become too acute.