And then Millais turned to us, and in words of the simplest candour confessed that Mr. Thackeray’s prophecy had somewhat hurt him—“For I will own,” he said, “that at that time, with the ambition of a boy, I cherished the hope that I might some day be President of the Royal Academy.” And then after a pause he added, “But now, looking back, I can say, ‘Mr. Thackeray, you were right, and the right man has been chosen.’”
It is not easy to convey the effect which that speech made upon the crowded audience, most of whom were artists, but the depth of the impression was shortly realised when Leighton rose to respond.
It would have been impossible for any speaker born to his task to have followed Millais without betraying in response a sensibility to those deeper chords of feeling which his simple words had touched. But Leighton was incapable of resuming the unfinished melody Millais had so finely tuned; incapable by his habit and temperament of discarding what he had prepared; and so it happened that the discourse he delivered, though no less perfect and polished than was his wont, left his audience gravely disappointed and wholly unmoved.
Of Leighton I had also written in those earlier articles in a manner perhaps that showed too little consideration for his great gifts and great accomplishments, but he was characteristically courteous in his reply to my request for some particulars of the days of his studentship, and the pains he had evidently taken to assist me as far as he could in the project I had in hand bears strong witness to that ungrudging demand he always made upon himself when any duty came before him. He wrote:
Hollyer
LORD LEIGHTON, P.R.A.
From the painting by G. F. Watts, in the National Portrait Gallery.
To face page 96.