Forty years of 'Spy'

by Sir Leslie Ward

In that strange "chancy" way in which remembrances of odd bizarre happenings jostle irrelevantly one against another, I recall another experience. Once I was going to a very juvenile party; I forget where, but I was ready and waiting for the nurse to finish dressing my sisters. Resplendent in a perfectly new suit of brown velvet, and full of expectation of pleasures to come, I was rather excited and consequently restless. My nurse told me not to fidget. Casual reprimands had no effect. Growing angry, she commanded me loudly and suddenly to sit down, which I did ... but in the bath!... falling backwards with a splash and with my feet waving in the air. My arrival at the party eventually in my old suit did not in any way interfere with my enjoyment.

About this time my mother visited Paris, and we looked forward to the letters she wrote to us. One letter mentions the interesting but afterwards ill-fated Prince Imperial.

"I again saw," she wrote, "the little baby Emperor; he is lovely and wore a large hat with blue feathers, I should like to paint him."

In 1857 the Thames was frozen over, and at Eton an ox was roasted upon the ice. I remember it well. Another time on the occasion of one of our many visits to Brighton, we saw the great comet, and a new brother arrived:—all three very wonderful events to me.

The brilliance of the "star with a tail" aroused my sister and me to leave our beds and open the window to gaze curiously upon this phenomenon. Simultaneously a carriage drove up to the door, and my mother (who had just arrived from Slough) alighted, and after her the nurse with a baby in her arms. We were reprimanded severely for our temerity in being out of bed, but we could not return until we had had a glimpse of the new baby, who became one of the most beautiful children imaginable.

In Brighton we visited some relations of my father's, the Misses Smith, daughters of Horace Smith, one of the authors of "The Rejected Addresses." Of the two sisters, Miss Tysie was considered the most interesting, and although Miss Rosie was beautiful, her sister was considered the principal object of attraction by the innumerable people they knew. Everybody worth knowing in the world of art and especially of literature came to see the "Recamier" of Brighton; Thackeray was counted amongst her intimates, and we may possibly know her again in a character in one of his books. I remember being impressed with these ladies as they were very kind to us. Miss Tysie died only comparatively recently.

Two years later, I met a real hero, a general of six feet four inches, who seemed to me like a brilliant personage from the pages of a romantic drama.

General Sir John Hearsey, then just returned from India, where he had taken a conspicuous part in quelling the Mutiny, came to stay with us at Upton Park with his wife, dazzling my wondering eyes with curiosities and strange toys, embroideries, and queer things such as I had never seen or heard of before. Their two children were in charge of a dark-eyed ayah, whose native dress and beringed ears and nose created no little stir in sleepy Upton.

I could never have dreamt of a finer soldier than the General, and I shall never forget the awe I felt when he showed me the wounds all about his neck, caused by sabre-cuts, and so deep I could put my fingers in them. My father painted a splendid portrait of him in native uniform and another of the beautiful Lady Hearsey in a gorgeous Indian dress of red and silver.

Another friend of my childhood was the late Mr. Birch, the sculptor; he was assisting my father at that time by modelling some of the groups for his pictures, and he used to encourage me to try and model, both in wax and clay. Some thirty years later, we met at a public dinner, and I realised the then famous sculptor and A.R.A. was none other than the Mr. Birch of my childhood.