"Someone found on the seashore the other day a pebble moulded exactly on the lines of Mr. Furniss' portrait of Sir William Harcourt."
NATURE'S PUZZLE PORTRAIT.
Other notices were in verse. This from Vanity Fair is the best:
"For Fame, 'tis said, Sir William craves,
And to some purpose he has sought her;
His face is fashioned by the waves:
When will his name be 'writ in water'?"
I lay under a charge of plagiarism. Nature had "invented" my Harcourt portrait, and had been at work upon it probably before I was born; the wild waves had by degrees moulded a shell into the familiar features, and when completed had left the sea-sculptured sketch high and dry on the coast. I now publish, with thanks, a photo-reproduction of the shell (not a pebble) as I received it: it is not in any way "doctored." It is a large, weather-beaten shell.
There is no doubt but that at one time Lewis Carroll studied Punch, for in one of his earliest letters to me he writes:
"To the best of my recollection, one of the first things that suggested to me the wish to secure your help was a marvellously successful picture in Punch of a House of Lords entirely composed of Harcourts, where the figures took all possible attitudes, and gave all possible views of the face; yet each was a quite unmistakable Sir William Harcourt!"
Again he refers to Punch (March, 1890):