Forty years of 'Spy'

by Sir Leslie Ward

During my first years on Vanity Fair (or thereabouts) Pellegrini was engaged in making an excellent series of caricatures of the members of the Marlborough Club, in which the Prince of Wales was much interested. His Royal Highness enjoyed Pellegrini's genius and his company. The drawings were reproduced in the most costly manner, and the collection was still unfinished when, owing to a disagreement, Pellegrini refused to complete them.

The famous caricaturist numbered some eminent men amongst his friends. Paolo Tosti and the late Chevalier Martino (Marine Painter in Ordinary to the King) I remember especially. In the early days Pellegrini was constantly to be seen at Pagani's, where there gradually gathered a coterie of well-known Italians and Englishmen. In this way the restaurant became the rendezvous of interesting people, and Pagani's undoubtedly owed its fame to Pellegrini.

In later years, illness barred him from many pleasant places, and kept him a prisoner in nursing homes. He suffered from a variety of ailments, and not the least amongst them was lumbago.

I was at the Fielding Club one evening when "Pelican" came crawling in, looking white and ill; blue circles round his eyes accentuated his look of misery.

"Come along, Pelican," I said, thinking to cheer him, for we frequently played together, "come and play billiards."

"Ah!" he groaned, his hand on his back. "I cannot play billiard to-night, my boy, I 'ave lumbago!"

Later the hospital claimed him, and it was sad to visit an old friend whose sufferings were acute, in such changed surroundings at Fitzroy Square.

The King of Italy decorated him, and when I came with my congratulations, he said, "Oh! Don't! It come too late!"

There is yet another memory of him in brighter circumstances which comes to me quite clearly across the years. One of my sisters was staying at my studio in William Street, when the Neapolitan came in full of his quaint humour. Looking at her gallantly, he smiled, and said, with a soft sigh and with such child-like admiration as to be irresistibly comical, "Oh, those beautiful cat's-eye!"

I remember the day was glorious and the season at its height. We were going out, when he said, "I must carry your sunshade." This was only an excuse for foolery, for he took it and, walking with it, assumed a mincing gait to the accompaniment of remarkably comic grimaces. My sister, remonstrating, said, "Really, Mr. Pellegrini, I can't walk with you like this."