"Very few of us painters will leave behind us such good and valuable work as he has left—work which is in great part historical. His appreciation of the pathetic was as strong as his sense of the ridiculous, and you will never find a bit of false sentiment in anything he did."
Landseer is reported to have said—after expressing enthusiastic admiration of Leech's genius—that the worst thing he ever did deserved to be framed and placed before students as an example for their emulation and improvement. Sir John Millais concludes his remarks upon his friend—remarks for which I am sure my readers will be as grateful as I am—by a few pathetic words heralding the sad and final scene:
"He became so nervous latterly that he used to take my arm when we were walking together, jerking it perceptibly at any sudden noise, or at any vehicle passing rapidly near us; lingering an unnecessary time at the street crossings; and the morning he came from Thackeray's house, on coming downstairs after seeing his dead friend, he said, 'I also shall die suddenly.'
"I arrived from a Continental tour," concludes Millais, "the day of his death, and by arrangement went immediately to his house to dine with him. His wife told me he had been asking for me; but I did not think it wise to disturb him then. A little later I returned, ran upstairs to his bedside, and found him dead."
[CHAPTER XXV.]
MR. H. O. NETHERCOTE AND JOHN LEECH.
For the following interesting paper my readers are indebted to Mr. Nethercote, of Moulton Grange, Northamptonshire, who sent it to my predecessor, Mr. Evans, amongst whose Leech material I found it. As Mr. Nethercote's anecdotes were intended for publication, I reproduce them without alteration or abbreviation. Mr. Nethercote and Leech were at Charterhouse together.
"Leech," says his friend, "was the most popular boy in the school, and the margins of his grammars were a delight to boyish eyes. After leaving Charterhouse I lost sight of him for many years; but through the medium of our common friend Reynolds, now Canon Hole, we came together again when he was living in Brunswick Square, and we frequently met at each other's houses. On one occasion, after telling me of his sufferings from street bands, he said: