Forty years of 'Spy'

by Sir Leslie Ward

There was a French cook at Knebworth who used to go fishing in the lake for minnows. Lord Lytton was wont to damp my ardour when I expressed a desire to fish, by informing me that there were pike, but that nobody had ever succeeded in catching any. Strangely enough, from the moment I started to fish, I was very successful. Never a day passed without my making a good haul; and although the Frenchman failed to catch them, he knew the secret of stuffing and serving them for dinner.

Lord Lytton was in some respects rather curious, for he informed me that if I went on fishing I should empty the lake. However, I went down one morning and found the whole lake drained and the fish destroyed. The only explanation which occurred to me was that he might have regarded fishing as cruel, just as he considered shooting brutal; for after once hearing the cries of a hare he had wounded he never handled a gun again.

An American lady named Madame de Rossit was then acting as Lord Lytton's secretary. She had her little daughter with her, a very precocious child, who had been brought up evidently on the great man's poetry. I remember a very painful evening when all the household and the neighbours were present to hear the child recite "The Lady of Lyons." Anything more distressing could hardly be imagined.

Hume, the spiritualist and medium, whom I mentioned in connection with the S. C. Halls, constantly came, and Lord Lytton, with a view to testing my psychic possibilities, arranged that I should work with the planchette. He was, I think, making experiments more out of curiosity than earnest belief. Our attempts were entirely without results. I was evidently not en rapport.

My host was always attracted by the mysterious; he loved haunted rooms and tales of ghosts. There was a room at Knebworth where a "yellow boy" walked at midnight, and the house itself was full of surprises. For instance, you went to a bookcase to take down a volume, and found the books were merely shams, or you attempted to open another case, and found it was a concealed entrance to the drawing-room. There were some fine pieces of old oak in the house, nevertheless, and upon my mother's expression of admiration for one old door he had it packed and sent to her as a present.

In the grounds, there was a curious maze that we found just as troublesome, but more picturesque. Then there was the beautiful Horace Garden, of which my father made a painting. Down a delightful green vista of lawns, barred with shadows from the trees overhead, stood statues of the Greek and Roman poets and philosophers, grey against the sunlit scene. This garden was Lytton's idea, and it was certainly one of the greatest "beauty spots" of Knebworth. The house itself did not inspire me; but at night, when the moon shone, the griffins on the front, silhouetted romantically against the sky, gave a mysterious beauty to the building, in the glamour of the moonlight.

I will conclude my memories of Knebworth with Lord Lytton's advice to me that no young man's education was complete until he had mastered the entire works of Sir Walter Scott.

On my return to London, I sent my painting to the Royal Academy, where it was very favourably received and well hung.

The Telegraph, coupling me with my father in this notice, said: "We have already mentioned a masterly drawing by E. M. Ward, R.A., and we would call attention to the work of something more than promise by the Academician's young son, 'The Hall at Knebworth, Herts.'"

Needless to say, I was encouraged by kindly criticism, for having chosen my profession in the teeth of opposition, I felt I had to succeed, and was extremely anxious to gain the approval of my father. I entered Carey's to take a preliminary course of instruction preparatory to the Royal Academy Schools. These studios were well known in former days as Sass's School of Art, where many eminent artists had attended before they rose to fame. At the same time I studied at the Slade School, where Poynter was then professor. I then copied at the National Gallery the well-known picture of "A Tailor," by Moroni, selected by my father, who had a very high regard for that wonderful old master. Now that everything was running smoothly I was quite happy. I was at liberty to follow my own desires, with the thought of the future before me, which I faced with all the optimism of youth and an untroubled mind.