g I met him when riding, and
we jogged into town together. He was a capital _raconteur_, a happy wit,
and told one incident I always recall to mind as I pass a house on the
top of Fitzjohn's Avenue, where a few years ago lived, painted and
"received" that Wilson Barrett of the brush, Edwin Long, R.A., a
hard-working, self-made artist who amassed a fortune by successfully
gauging the taste of the large middle-class English public in mixing
religion with voluptuous melodrama. On the annual "Show Sunday" no
studio was more popular than Long's. His subjects perhaps had something
to do with it. They were in keeping with the Sabbath. The work too was
as smooth and as highly finished as the most orthodox sermon. _Ars longa
est._ Yes, said some cynic, but art is not Long. But anyway Long's art
was commercially successful, and he was what is known as "a good
business man."

[Illustration]

As haberdashers in the days of crude advertising used to place men in
costume at the shop door--a fireman when they were selling off a damaged
salvage stock, or a sailor or, if a _very_ enterprising tradesman, a
diver, helmet and all, when selling off goods damaged from a wreck--so
did this Academician, when exhibiting Biblical subjects on "Show
Sunday," engage a Nubian model to stand at the door of his shop. This
man had also to announce the names of the guests, and when the small,
spectacled, simple man with the large smile gave his name, Sir Spencer
Wells, the model pulled himself up to his full height and in his best
English proudly and loudly announced to the crowd in the studio--

"The Prince of Wales!"

The effect was magical: all fell in line, ladies curtseyed, men bowed,
when the Prince of Hampstead Heath entered. The artist looked as black
as his model, and the visitors laughed.

At the other end of Fitzjohn's Avenue once lived that ever popular
Academician, the late Mr. John Pettie. Mr. Pettie was a vigorous
draughtsman and a beautiful colourist, and many of his portraits are
very fine. He seemed to revel in painting a red coat--an object to many
painters as maddening as it is to the infuriated bull. On one "Show
Sunday" before the sending-in day of the Royal Academy, at which he
exhibited, I recollect admiring a portrait of Mr. Lamb, the celebrated
golfer, in his red coat, when the original of the portrait came into the
studio. Not feeling very well, Mr. Pettie had to avoid the crowd of his
admirers seeing him. There were a f