“View in Ireland! What made you think of that? Don’t you see it’s the corner of the orchard there, with all the thistles and docks and wild flowers?”
“Well, to be sure! Fancy anyone a paintin’ them weeds and trumpery!” and with that cheerless remark the old fellow sheered off.
Sculptors, unlike painters, rarely venture out of their studios, but it happened that a sculptor came down to spend a few days with us when in a Norfolk village, and so liked the place that he hired a barn, had a lot of clay and a turntable sent down, and started modelling a milkmaid. As the work progressed, it became the talk of the place, and, in due course, numbers came to see the clay image that my friend was setting up in the barn. This work did appeal to them. They could see at a glance what it was meant to represent, and the chorus of approval was loud and general, except on the part of the village constable. He was a taciturn man, and used to come and smoke his pipe and preserve a contemptuous silence. One day he said—
“Are you making that image for a church?”
“No. Why did you think I was?”
“Oh, nothing. Only when I was in London, and that’s a smart while ago, I worked on a church as was a buildin’, and we had to fix some figures; only they were made in what we calls Portland cement.”
“Oh, then, you have seen sculpture before?”
“Yes, sir, ’tain’t the first time as I’ve seed a graven image, as the Bible calls ’em. D’yer ever make them figures they puts over doors and winders of houses?”