found
_their_ way into the same hands. I was equally fascinated by Japanese
art at Farmer & Rogers', where I soon made friends with one of their
staff, a promising young connoisseur, Mr. Liberty, the same who now
rules supreme in Regent Street.

Now Browning worshipped--I thought rather exclusively--at the shrine of
old Italian art, and I do not think he ever really appreciated the
Japanese. Certain it is that he disliked the pictures I painted when my
Japano-mania was at its height; notably one entitled "On the Banks of
the Kanagawa," which he condemned, perhaps not without good reason, for
I had never been on the banks of that or any other Jap river, and my
figures, although clad in the beautiful dresses I had bought, were more
or less evolved from my inner consciousness. In fact I would not
hesitate to say that the picture was bad, were I not afraid of being
thought wanting in respect to the august body of Royal Academicians, who
gave it a very excellent place on their walls. As their judgment is
known to be infallible, Browning, for once in the way, must have been
labouring under a misconception.

If so, he but too generously made up for it in later years when, on many
occasions, he showed the greatest interest in my work. He became a
frequent visitor at the studio, and the hours he spent with me are
amongst the happiest in my artistic experience. To him it was a
never-failing source of pleasure to visit his artist friends, and with
more than one of them did he make himself thoroughly at home. He had the
gift of putting everybody at his ease, sometimes exchanging a few
pleasant words with the servant who came to answer the door, sometimes
chatting with the models; he was quite unconventional, and would just as
soon say, "He don't" as "He doesn't." A great friend of his was Jack
Turner, a charming specimen of the London waif, a perfect little angel
in his tenth year, but an angel, as it unfortunately proved, with a
stumble and a fall, in consequence of which he had to do his growing up
in a reformatory, and who asks for the price of a glass of beer when I
meet him now. "Good morning, Mr. Browning." "Thank you, Mr. Browning,"
the little angel would say, for he had quickly realised that the name
had a good sound, and the poet would stroke his curly hair and press the
price of an ounce of sweets into his innocent little hand.

Then there was Laura, a model, who had one of the most sculptural
figures I have ever seen.