To Carlyle Mrs. Allingham had the privilege of frequent and familiar access during his last years; and when he found that he was not expected to pose to her, and that she had, as he emphatically declared, a real talent for portraiture (the only form of pictorial art in which he took any interest), he became very kind and complaisant, and she was able to make nearly a dozen portraits of him in water-colours. An early one, which he declared made him “look like an old fool,” was painted in the little back garden of No. 5 Cheyne Row, which was not without shade and greenery in the summer time. There, in company with his pet cat “Tib,” and a Paisley churchwarden (“no pipe good for anything,” according to him, “being get-at-able in England”), he indulged in smoking, the only creature comfort that afforded him any satisfaction. In these portraits he is depicted sitting in his comfortable dressing-gown faded to a dim slaty grey, refusing to wear a gorgeous oriental garment that his admirers had presented to him. An etching of one of these drawings appeared in the Art Journal for 1882. Other portraits were painted in the winter of 1878-79, in his long drawing-room with its three windows looking out into the street.
Rossetti she never saw, although he had been an intimate friend of her husband’s for twenty years[5] and was then living in Chelsea, for he was just entering on that unfortunate epoch preceding his death, when he was induced to cut himself adrift from all his old circle of acquaintances. The fact is regrettable, for it would have been interesting to note his opinion of a lady’s work with which he must have been in full sympathy.
Mr. Allingham had known Ruskin for many years. His wife’s acquaintance began in interesting fashion at the Old Water-Colour Society’s. She happened to be there during the Exhibition of 1877 at a time when the room was almost empty. Mr. Ruskin had been looking at her drawing of Carlyle, and introducing himself, asked her why she had painted Carlyle like a lamb, when he ought to be painted like a lion, as he was, and whether she would paint the sage as such for him? To this she had to reply that she could only paint him as she saw him, which was certainly not in leonine garb. One afternoon soon afterwards, Mr. Allingham chanced to meet Ruskin at Carlyle’s, and brought him round to see her work. She was at the time engaged on the drawing of “The Clothes-Line” ([Plate 11]), and he objected to the scarlet of the handkerchief, and also to the woman, who he said ought to have been a rough workwoman, an opinion which Mrs. Allingham did not share with him at the time, but which she has since felt to be a correct one. He also saw another drawing with a grey sky, and asked her why she did not make her skies blue. To her reply that she thought there was often great beauty in grey skies, he growled, “The devil sends grey skies.”
Browning, an old friend of her husband’s, Mrs. Allingham sometimes had the privilege of seeing during her residence in London. One occasion was typical of the man. He had been asked to come and see her work, which was at the time arranged at one end of a room at Trafalgar Square, Chelsea, before sending in to the Exhibition. The drawings were naturally small ones, and Browning appeared to be altogether oblivious to their existence. Turning round, with his back to them, he at once commenced a story of some one who came to see an artist’s work, and the artist was very huffed because his visitor never took the slightest notice of his pictures, but talked to him of other subjects all the time. This, Browning considered, was no sufficient ground for his huffiness. His obliviousness to Mrs. Allingham’s drawings may have been due to his having been accustomed to the pictures of his son, which were of large size, and in comparison with which Mrs. Allingham’s would be quite invisible. Against this theory, however, I may mention that on one occasion I happened to have the good fortune to be present in his son’s studio when Tennyson was announced. Browning at once advanced to the door to meet him, bent low, and addressed him as “Magister Meus,” and although the Laureate had come to see the paintings, and stayed some time, neither of the two poets, so long as I was present, noticed them in any way.
Whilst Mrs. Allingham was painting Carlyle, Browning came to see him, and they held a most interesting and delightful conversation on the subject of the great French writers. The alteration in Browning’s demeanour from his usual bluff and breezy manner to a quiet, deferential tone during the conversation was very notable.
Of her intimacy with Tennyson I may speak later when we come to the drawings which illustrate his two houses in Sussex and the Isle of Wight.
The year of her marriage was also a landmark in Mrs. Allingham’s career, through the Royal Academy accepting and hanging two water-colours, one entitled “The Milkmaid,” the other, “Wait for Me,” the subject of the latter being a young lady entering a cottage whilst a dog watched her outside the gate. It would have been interesting to have been able to insert a reproduction of either of these in this volume, for they would probably have shown that her fear as to her inability to master colour was entirely without basis, but I have not been able to trace them. The drawings were not only well hung, but were sold during the Exhibition.
It was, however, by another drawing that Mrs. Allingham won her name.
In the year 1875 she was commissioned by Mr. George Bell to make a water-colour from one of the black-and-white drawings which she had done some years before for Mrs. Ewing’s A Flat Iron for a Farthing. We shall have occasion to describe at length, later on, this delightful little picture that is reproduced in [Plate 8]. It is only necessary for our purpose here to state that it was seen early in 1875 by that prince of landscape water-colourists, Mr. Alfred Hunt.
He was an old friend of Mr. Allingham’s, and being told that his wife was thinking of trying for election at the Royal Society of Painters in Water Colours, kindly offered to go through her portfolios. The From these he made a selection, and promised to propose her at an election which was about to take place. The result fully proved the soundness of his choice, for the candidate not only secured the rare distinction of being elected on the first time of asking, but the still rarer one of securing her place in that body, so notable for its diversity of opinion when candidates are in question, with hardly a dissentient vote.