Page:Pen And Pencil Sketches - Volume I.djvu/94

58 picture painted here was a full-length figure of “Bottom enacting Pyramus,” from the “Midsummer Night’s Dream” — an unfortunate picture from the first. It was skied in the West Room of the R.A., and looking at the work since, I wonder it was not rejected at once ! It was too ugly. Sent to every provincial exhibition in the kingdom, crossing the Atlantic to America, where it was shown at Boston, it still .came back to me. No dog was ever so faithful in persistent devotion to its owner as this picture to me. I have it now, but carefully con- cealed from the eye of man. Christie’s shall never know it !

Working at home all day, either painting or drawing on wood, I used now to go to Langham Chambers of an evening, where there was a Society of Artists who met for the study of the nude or draped model in alternate weeks. Formerly its meeting-place was in a sculptor’s yard in Clipstone Street. Sir John Tenniel was one of the artists who worked here. When I joined the Society, it had not very long migrated to larger and more commodious premises in All Souls Place (a small street on the northern side of the church), on the ground-floor of the house known as Langham Chambers. Mr. Lowes Dickenson then and still occupies rooms in the upper part. So did Luard, an artist who began life as a military man, was