Forty years of 'Spy'

by Sir Leslie Ward

"Why I can go on standing all day without fatigue!"

The following is an amusing but somewhat embarrassing contretemps which befell me at an afternoon party. I was greeted on arrival by my hostess's young and effusive daughter whose father I had just cartooned in Vanity Fair and who introduced me to an old lady, exclaiming:—

"This is Mr. Leslie Ward.... I should say the great Mr. Leslie Ward!" whereupon the old lady raised her lorgnettes and gazed severely through them at me, and then turning to the young lady remarked somewhat ironically, "I think perhaps in future you'd better label your guests." I felt inclined to sink into the floor, especially when I viewed the embarrassment of my young hostess, and then the cold gaze of the lady.... I have often wondered since whether I had caricatured her husband.

Artists have not been entirely ignored in Vanity Fair; Gustave Doré was a willing victim, and gave me good opportunities of watching him in a studio in London while at work, but eventually I represented him as I first saw him, in dress clothes. I nearly fell over his sketches on the floor, for they were so thickly spread about everywhere.

Somewhere about the same period I did Whistler, who was an excellent subject, but his unlimited peculiarities lay more in his gesture and speech and habits. I never went to a social function at which he was present without hearing his caustic, nasal little laugh, "Ha-ha-ho-ho-he-he" raised at the wrong moment. For instance, when a song was being sung in a drawing-room, or when a speech was being made at a public dinner. At the same time there was something quite irresistible about the fascination of the man. He lived in a house in Tite Street on the Chelsea Embankment where there was a charming garden, and every one who had the opportunity breakfasted with him when invited, although the menu usually consisted of a sardine and a cup of coffee. His wife, who was the widow of Godwin, the architect, was a charming woman, and he simply adored her; in fact he so much felt her death that he was never the same high-spirited man after.

À propos of public dinners, I am reminded of Walter Crane, whose name I always shall hold in grateful memory, because he saved me from that most detestable task, at least to me, a public speech. We were invited as representatives of art to the Company of Patten Makers, the Lord Mayor being present, and I was suddenly told in the middle of a pheasant course, that I should be expected to speak, a piece of information that agitated me considerably, but was much relieved when Crane, who sat next to me, took the burden off my shoulders, and saved the situation very cleverly indeed.

F. Carruthers Gould, with his bushy eyebrows, I frequently came in contact with in the precincts of the House of Commons where we were both engrossed in making mental notes of our subjects. I have a great admiration for his work in which he has expressed the views of his party with admirable spirit in some of the finest cartoons of the age. Many people are unaware he was originally a member of the Stock Exchange, but he was not born for that business, although in it he saw ample opportunity for caricature. It was there that he made a startling cartoon in which he represented the Members of the Stock Exchange as the animals coming out of the Ark two by two, in a truly humorous manner, and this made his reputation. I have always admired the way in which he introduced birds into his caricatures, and on one occasion remarked to him how beautifully, and with what thorough knowledge, he drew them; and he then informed me that he was the nephew of the great ornithologist, Gould, and had been brought up among birds from his earliest youth. His political cartoons are most humorously conceived and carried out, although we know which side he favours in politics.

A stray anecdote occurs to me, as I write, of the very artistic but eccentric Louisa Lady Ashburton, a gifted lady who knew most of the really great literary and artistic people of her age, and counted many others, such as Watts and Carlyle, her intimates. My mother, who knew her very well, painted several interiors of her residence, Kent House, Knightsbridge, in one of which a striking portrait of her figured. But my story is chiefly concerned with the exacting old lady from whom I received a letter through her secretary (previous to my introduction to her), saying, "She had taken a fancy to a pencil-sketch of mine, of a child that she had seen, and that if I would lunch with her, at a day and hour mentioned, we could discuss the possibility of my making a portrait of her little grandson." The day arrived and with it a thick fog—for it was in November—I called upon the lady at the time stated in her letter, and was informed that she was out. After waiting some little time, I took myself off for a short while; had lunch elsewhere and returned about three o'clock, and was more fortunate this time, for I was announced into the dining-room, where I found Lady Ashburton and her lady secretary at lunch, to which they had just sat down. I was much astonished, after being requested to take a seat at the table, to receive rather a strong glare from my hostess, with the query, "Who is he?" to her secretary.

"This is Mr. Leslie Ward; don't you remember the letter I wrote at your request asking him to lunch to-day?"