Читать книгу The Life of Sir William Quiller Orchardson - Hilda Orchardson Gray - Страница 27

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Orchardson was with his company at the Queen’s Park review in Edinburgh in 1860. He said it was a magnificent sight down below Arthur’s Seat; he was marching at the end of his line and had a good view of “The Queen,” as Queen Victoria was always called. Little “Chattie” asked her “darling Bill” what the Queen looked like, and he answered, “She was just like an old lady adding up her accounts.”

The foregoing letter must have been written about the same time as this, following one from his great friend John MacWhirter, scolding him for not answering a letter of invitation to join him in Arran:

“You have been going it, I believe you have finished your little picture and had a sitting of Mr. Dick. How about Craig House? When you go out to call, talk about me and remember me to all the Consolidateds, to Cameron and his sister, to the great colonel, to the Hay of Hays, the McTaggart of the Taggarts and the Graham of [?] and if you have a clear conscience [about answering letters] take my blessing to yourself.

Yours,

John MacWhirter.

“P.S.—Highlanders live on midges and mist. I ate a sea-duck the other day. Did you ever get ‘ganz-braten’ in Germany?”

Mr Peter Graham, on my writing to him for early recollections, sent me the following shortly before his death:

“I knew Orchardson by sight like every art student, but my being some years his junior prevented me from knowing him then. I was, I think, about eighteen or nineteen when I first got acquainted with him personally, and at that time he was so far advanced in his profession, and I was so much the other way, that I looked on him not only with admiration but with a certain degree of awe; and I never lost that early impression. He was always willing to please and to be pleased; always kindly and good-tempered; and I never saw him, even under provocation, lose his temper.

“I remember as if it had occurred yesterday waiting with him and MacWhirter in the avenue to a large house in the suburbs of Edinburgh while a sister of MacWhirter who was an artist went to the lodge to get a small picture of hers which she had left there. A lady, young, good-looking and handsomely dressed, came through the gate and was about to go up the avenue, but before doing so she addressed Orchardson. What she said I could not make out and apparently neither could he; but his answer was, ‘Oh yes, yes,’ lifting his hat at the same time. She then pointed to a large painted board prohibiting trespassers, nailed to a tree opposite; but Orchardson, with the utmost graciousness, said, ‘Oh! never mind that.’ She blushed scarlet and walked on. MacWhirter then whispered to us that that was Lady ——, the wife of the proprietor of the house! You can imagine how tickled we were, for Orchardson’s manner was such as would have become the owner of the place kindly encouraging strangers to enter.”

Mr Graham had told me this tale before, and on my asking my Father if he remembered the incident, thought “No, but possibly yes,” and then laughed, and looking shy, added, “But what better defence could I have made.”

Many of the men who are now famous were young then, and drew for Good Words which must have been beautifully illustrated; Orchardson, besides Millais and many others, was amongst them. F. Borders was a wood engraver of the time and did some of W. Q. O.’s things. Of one of the drawings he reported that the “parties” were pleased with the general effect of the drawing but that they fancied it was hurried as it was done in a mixture of ink and pencil, and the next drawing must be entirely in pencil the same as the Cæsare block. Two subjects were offered, “The Wise Men of the East,” or “John Baptizing the Saviour.” He also remarked he did not quite like the woman’s face.

Edinburgh.

[Probably about 1860.]