I remember this picture being exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1856; I thought highly of it, and looked, but in vain, for a repetition of a success so complete as to cause the purchase of the picture by a well-known dealer, who had an engraving made from it, the print meeting with extensive popularity. Halliday's face was a very plain one, but totally unlike that of Tom Noddy: his hair was pale yellow, "a vapoury moustache joining a soft beard, long but sparse whiskers;" he was slightly lame, and altogether an elf-like quaintness in his appearance made him quite a remarkable little figure.
"Leech," says Mr. Hunt, "became intimate with him, and so under many names and ingenious disguises did Leech's public make his acquaintance—Tom Noddy, and a variety of names he figured under. Leech told of an expedition which formed a small party with Halliday one evening in the country, where there was to be a meet with the hounds next morning. As they dined and chatted, the attractions became greater every minute to the cavalier instincts of Halliday's youth. Leech and the others had horses coming, and on inquiry it was found that it would be possible for Mike to find a mount at hand, and so it was pointed out that he could sleep there and have a good day on the morrow.
"'No,' said Halliday, 'I must find a train from town in time to be at the cover.'
"'Why, in the name of mystery—why go to town?' said they all.
"But all was useless—the little man would go, and would come back by a train starting very early from town; and so, to the bewilderment of all, he did. The next morning the friends went to see the train come in. As it stopped, down jumped the little Nimrod, decked out in carefully preserved pink, well-stained cords, with top-boots, and falling over the rim a tassel of ribbons in emulation of Sixteen-stringed Jack, as dandy hunting-men had dressed twenty years before. He was capped with hunting-helmet, and he carried a magnificent riding-whip in hand. Seeing him thus walking and skipping with that outward turn of the feet, which is denominated in horsey parlance 'dishing,' Leech said that with all the desire in the world to treat the matter with supreme seriousness, as Halliday did, it was almost impossible for him to curb his provoked risibility."
Leech, in speaking of Halliday at a party, of which Holman Hunt made one, said:
"Mike is a mine of resource to me. Whenever I am in difficulties I can remember something of him that it is possible to turn into a 'subject'; and," he added earnestly, "I do hope he never recognises the resemblance, for I often put some point to prevent recognition."
The surprise at this innocence made the whole table burst into laughter, but in undeceiving Leech we were able to assure him that Halliday was by no means pained by the darts which had struck him; that he wore them proudly as decorations, and so disarmed the ill-nature that might be disposed to take advantage of the chance. He often achieved this by drawing the attention of his visitors to the last addition to his gallery of Punch portraits, exhibited on the walls of his studio.
It must have been from some peculiarity of dress or manner, to which Halliday's attention was called by "a candid friend," that he discovered that in drawing Tom Noddy Leech "had him in his eye"; for, as I said before, his face was as unlike that of Tom Noddy as Leech's own face was unlike the round, good-humoured physiognomy of Mr. Briggs, though some of the escapades of Briggs had their origin in Leech's personal experiences: a happy accident to the roof of Leech's house, and the noise and varied troubles caused in repairing it, was the suggestion of the famous scene of the Briggs disaster; and it was Leech himself who was caught by the leg by a policeman as—finding his front door blocked by scaffolding—he was attempting to enter in what that functionary considered a burglarious manner.