Often in those busy years I wondered if I had been too fond of pleasure, too absorbed by amusement in those young married days, and if the necessity to work was my punishment. Every little act counts in life. Every good deed brings its reward, every silly action demands its toll.
The completion of my thirteenth year had ended my strenuous literary work. I then had more time for my friends, social purposes, calls of charity, committee work of all sorts and kinds, so although I remained as busy as ever, I was no longer a money-making machine.
It was then that I lost one of my oldest and dearest friends. I was ill myself at the time of his death (April, 1910), but from my bed I dictated, and corrected the proof on my sofa during the days of convalescence of an article for the Fortnightly Review, July, 1910.
“One of the men I should like to meet in England is William Quiller Orchardson.” So spoke the great Shakespearian writer of America, Dr. Horace Howard Furness, when I was staying with him on the Delaware River near Philadelphia (1905).
We were standing before a large engraving of the “Mariage de Convenance,” one of this famous scholar’s dearest possessions.
“The idea,” continued Dr. Furness, “the thought, the sense of design; the space, the refinement, the art of the whole thing, are, to my mind, perfect. The man who did that must be a charming man, and next time I cross the Atlantic I shall hope to see him.”
They will never meet now, but I told Orchardson the story when I came home, and he looked quite shy with simple pleasure that any picture of his was so much appreciated.
Sir William Orchardson was one of Nature’s courtiers. He was refined in manner, delicate in thought, artistic in temperament.
England has lost one of her greatest painters. Orchardson is one of the names that will be known centuries hence. He was one of the few men to see his old work increase in value. He had a style of his own. “Thin,” some called it, doubtless because of his means of work, whereby the canvas remained exposed; but the talent was not thin. It was rich in tone, and the work was strong. Probably no living artist painted with less impasto, and yet produced such effect of solidity.