Leech was fond of telling of this adventure with the Duke, whose likeness can be seen in more than one of Landseer's pictures.
[CHAPTER XIV.]
PERSONAL ANECDOTES (continued).
At the time when the troop of artists and literary men were stumping the country with their theatrical performances, Leech lived in Alfred Place, which he soon left for a charming little house in Notting Hill Terrace.
Dickens wrote an amusing account of one of the amateur excursions, which the immortal Mrs. Gamp is supposed to join, and about which she discourses to her friend Mrs. Harris, not forgetting her opinion of the artists, Cruikshank and Leech:
"If you'll believe me, Mrs. Harris, I turns my head, and sees the very man" (George Cruikshank) "a-making pictures of me on his thumb-nail at the window; while another of 'em" (John Leech), "a tall, slim, melancolly gent, with dark hair and a bage voice, looks over his shoulder, and with his head o' one side, as if he understood the subject, and coolly he says:
"'I've drawed her several times in Punch,' he says, too. The owdacious wretch!