There was a particular fascination in sitting for this bust. Two more hours completed the neck and shoulders, and we had finished work for that day. If it had never been touched again, it would not have mattered. It was rough and impressionist in style, but I was there. I could see my very image on the modelling stand.
On my third visit the sculptor decided to add my hands and arms.
“Hands being as expressive as a face,” he said.
This meant more building up. Accordingly, bundle after bundle of firewood was requisitioned, until nine whole faggots were piled up inside me. A pretty little waist, truly, to require nine bundles of firewood as a foundation. However, in they went, and on went the clay in great dabs, with a nice greasy squish-squish each time it received a pat from the sculptor’s hand.
Simplicity is his ideal, and it is interesting to hear Herbert Hampton discourse on this subject, as, indeed, on other matters connected with his craft.
The bust to the waist was completed in six sittings of about two hours each, and a week later my image was placed in the Rotunda of the Royal Academy, where it smiled on everyone passing the door. “The impersonation of animation was my first impression of you,” said Herbert Hampton, “and that is what I tried to get in the bust.” And he certainly did. In spite of the usual placidity of white clay, the lady looks as if she were speaking.
One can know too much.
I remember, for instance, Herbert Hampton saying one day to me:
“Only the rudiments of anatomy are wanted for sculpture. If one knows too much one is apt to emphasise every muscle, every vein, every sinew, and the result is an anatomical specimen. Simplicity is the greatest charm of art, suggestion its goal. Why! great and wonderful as Michael Angelo was, I almost feel he knew too much anatomy.”
Experiences such as this sitting are of the greatest help and value to a writer, and give an insight into sister arts that widen one’s mental horizon and ripen one’s judgment. All workers should leave their own groove and see and know craftsmen in kindred branches of endeavour. Outside interests and hobbies are the worker’s salvation and inspiration.