Down in that studio in the Fulham Road I spent many pleasant hours watching him work. He would often forget I was there. Then, rousing himself to my presence, he would offer me a cup of tea at odd intervals of half an hour, entirely oblivious of the fact that it was nearing dinner-time. A certain actor does this sort of thing as a pose—an impudent pose—but Gilbert did it because he could not help himself. He wanted to be hospitable, and hours became moments as he worked and dreamed. There were days and weeks and months when he never did anything, when hunger stared him in the face. But rather than part with a work of his creation, or an unfinished dream, he preferred to starve and, if needs be, die. London was no place for him. He was too utterly an artist for a great, teeming, bustling city, and away in Bruges—dead to the world, dead to his friends—the wreck of that great and charming personality is dreaming his life away amongst his unfinished gods, without the strength of will or purpose to complete his inspirations.
The complexity of Gilbert was beyond comprehension. His very genius was his curse. Truly a gifted, wayward child—lovable, but annoying; exasperating, but delightful.
Bertram MacKennall, an Australian by birth, was poor and unknown as a student in Paris, when he met Alfred Gilbert. He adored Gilbert and worshipped his work. One day the latter said to MacKennall:
“Go to London, man, and start there.”
“But I cannot afford it.”
“Never mind, go and try, and you will become my rival. It will do us both good, spur us both on to better things, perhaps.”
To London he came. He succeeded, and finally stepped into Alfred Gilbert’s place at the Academy. What irony of fate!
One day I chanced to go to MacKennall’s studio when he was working on a wax of the head of King George V for the coinage. On a school-slate, standing up on a small easel, was a little grey wax head in relief, measuring three or four inches across. Smaller he would not work because of his eyes; from that plaque a machine would reduce the silhouette exactly to the size required for the coin.
“Oh, the bother of this work,” he exclaimed. “Stamping one side of the coin often bumps out the other side in the wrong place, and all sorts of little annoyances like that constantly occur.”
His love of Gilbert was very touching—and his admiration of Phil May was only equalled by his surprise at his becoming a Roman Catholic a week before his death.