Forty years of 'Spy'

by Sir Leslie Ward

EARL OF LONSDALE.
1879.

A subject whom I strongly caricatured, pleased me by saying when introduced to him, "No man is worth that (snapping his fingers) if he can't join in a laugh against himself."

I remember going to lunch with a very rich man (for the purpose of studying him), who would insist on looking at my rough notes in spite of my protestations to the effect that they were only notes, not drawings. He became highly incensed.

"I may be stoutish," he exclaimed, "but I'm not a fat, dumpish figure like that. Now wouldn't it be a good and a new idea if you were to make me different. You see my friends know me as a short, round man, it would be so funny and quite a novelty if you were to make me tall and thin. Now you think it well over—it would be quite a departure in caricature."

I intimated that I thought the idea was rather far-fetched and that it was possible that his friends would prefer him as nature had made him.

"If you want to please me, you must make me tall," he said. "I'll come to your studio and pay you a visit and perhaps buy some of your work—if you satisfy me in this respect."

I told him I was not accustomed to be bribed in that manner and wished I had not accepted his hospitality. There are people who think they can do anything by bribery. They call at one's studio, and hint that one shall paint a portrait of them and go as far as to point out how it shall be done, and what the price shall be. Others, when one has done a mere drawing of them, imagine that they have been tremendously caricatured and complain bitterly.

If it had not been a question of time and money, I would not have encouraged sitters in my studio at all. When I became pressed for time, however, it was impossible to seek my subjects, especially when, with the exception of men of definite public position, I was not always sure of finding them. One interesting point in connection with the men whom one finds only in such places as the House of Commons, is the fact that one is then at the mercy of the lighting of the building. This frequently accounts for bad portraits and unrecognizable caricatures, for lighting falsifies extraordinarily.

Of course I had innumerable sitters who were delightful in every way, and many who, if they were peculiar, were otherwise good sorts; but I am chiefly concerned at this moment with the strange stories of the exceptional cases that have astonished me from time to time. A peculiarity of some of my sitters in which I have rarely found an exception, is as to their professed ability to stand. I do not like to tire my sitters, and I usually tell them I am afraid they will find a position wearisome, which they deny, telling me at the same time that standing for hours is not in the least tedious to them. Half an hour goes by—and they start to sigh and fidget, and presently give in, and finally confess they had not expected it to be such an ordeal—and always with the air of having remarked something entirely original. I have noticed, too, the brightness of step with which my sitters enter my studio, and, after a long sitting, the revived brightness brought about by the mention of lunch.