LESSONS IN ANATOMY
From an original drawing by Sir Edward Burne-Jones, Bart.
To face page 80.
the occasion, we shifted our quarters to Previtale’s, and I have known no merrier hours before or since than those we passed together.
Burne-Jones always made a grave pretence of being quite ignorant as to what should be ordered for these little feasts. Of one of them, where he was to be the host, he wrote to me some few days before imploring me in a spirit of mock despair to come to his rescue and arrange the menu.
“I no more know,” he cries, “what dinner to order than the cat on the hearth as I write—less, for it would promptly order mice. Oh, Carr, save my honour and order for me a nice dinner so that I may not be quoted as a warning of meanness! I am not mean. Order apples of gold on plates of silver, and let the wine be scented and brought from Lebanon; but not a mean dinner, nor yet ostentatious or presuming, or such a one as could possibly compete with the banquets of the affluent. My honour is in your hands. Oh, Carr, come to the rescue!”
It is extraordinary, in view of the concentrated energy he bestowed upon his work, how readily and how generously he always responded to the appeal of his friends. There was no demand they could make upon him which he seemed unable to satisfy, no help which the youngest or the most modest student could ask of him which he was not always ready and willing to give; and yet all these gifts of friendship so lavishly bestowed were never allowed to interfere with the absolute devotion that he owed and that he paid to his art.
Behind the affectionate gentleness of his nature, that was susceptible to every influence, there lay a faith that nothing could shake or weaken. In its service he was prepared to make all sacrifice of time and strength and labour. His friends claimed much of him, and he yielded it. Generous both in act and thought, there was probably no man of such concentrated purpose who ever placed himself so freely at the service of those he loved. But there was no friend of them all, and there were many who could claim perhaps a closer alliance than I, who could cause him to swerve for a moment from the labour that was his life.