He was engaged, with several fellow artists, on a hunting scene, when an elderly lady and a friend strolled quietly past. Mr. Smith, at the moment, was standing stock-still, scanning his work; then suddenly making a motion with his brush to retouch the canvas, he was startled by an unearthly yell from the old lady:
“Good heavens! they are alive!”
Our “Master of the Robes” fell in conversation with an American lady, who told him that she had paid for admission with a shilling given to her in the States by an English aunt with the instruction that if ever she went to London the shilling should be expressly spent on her admission to Madame Tussaud’s.
She had related the same story to the money-taker at the turnstile, and he was so impressed that he laid the romantic shilling on one side. Our representative offered to give it back to the lady, but she thanked him and said:
“No, I guess I could not break faith with my aunt! The shilling has found its appointed place in Madame Tussaud’s till, after many years, and I have done as I was told.”
My father’s meeting with Phineas Taylor Barnum, the great showman, was an accidental one.
While lunching in a West End restaurant the brusque and humorous behaviour of one of the guests sitting near enlisted my father’s amused attention. The waiters were no less amused by the breezy visitor with the American accent, who supplemented his commands with odd remarks. Having ordered a second dozen of oysters, the American said:
“I guess I could hanker arter these. Bring me another dozen.”
Looking hard at him, my father recognised Barnum, and presently the two men were in friendly conversation; in fact, they spent the greater part of the day together, as kindred spirits are apt to do in such circumstances.
Barnum used to call himself the “Prince of Humbugs,” and gave that title to his autobiography. He told my father a story about a bright idea that struck him when his show was going none too well in an American town.