Pellegrini
I must write a few lines in memory of the prince of caricaturists, Carlo Pellegrini. We knew him throughout his career and always enjoyed his company. On one evening when he gave it to us, on being announced, he kissed my wife's hand and uttered some compliment in Italian; she immediately, in a spirit of fun, rapidly recited an old and rather long "proverb" in his language, which she had learned by heart, as a child—it being her sole acquaintance with Italian—the little man's expression of amazement was a study.
She played the same trick, with still greater effect, on the stage of the Scala Theatre at Milan which we went over with a party of friends, when Arthur Cecil asked her to address an imaginary audience.
Music
I sat to Pellegrini once, when he began to paint portraits seriously—the idea was soon abandoned.—With regard to mine he wrote: "I have sent your fac simile to the Grosvenor: I hope you will be well hanged."
I saw the "Pelican"—as Pellegrini was called by his friends—in his last illness at his rooms in Mortimer Street. Shortly before the peaceful end he said pathetically to his faithful servant: "Wil-li-am, put me on clean shirt—I die clean."
I hardly regarded my old friend Leslie Ward as a caricaturist; his clever drawings were, to my mind, portraits—humorously, but gently, exaggerated. They were mainly the result of sittings. Pellegrini's work was produced from memory.
Leslie Ward was the son of distinguished painters; his sister Beatrice shared their art, as I can testify by a valued possession, a very charming drawing of my wife.
Arthur Sullivan