Leslie Ward - Forty Years of 'Spy'

The Panopticon was another place of amusement, long forgotten, I suppose, except by the very few. The building, now changed and known as the Alhambra, was a place where music and dancing were features of attraction. It was opened in 1852 and bore the name of the Royal Panopticon of Science and Art. I believe it was financed by philanthropic people, but it failed. I remember it because in the centre, where the stalls are now, rose a great fountain with coloured lights playing upon it. There were savages, too, and I shook hands with a Red Indian, with all his war paint gleaming, the scalp locks to awe me, and the feathers standing fiercely erect. He impressed me enormously, and in consequence of my seeing the savages, I became nervously imaginative. I had heard of burglars, and often reviewed in my mind my possible behaviour if I discovered one under my bed, where I looked every night in a sort of fearsome expectation. Religion had been early instilled into me; and, knowing the ultimate fate of wicked sinners, I resolved to tell him he would have to go to hell if he harmed me, and was so consoled with the idea that I went to sleep quite contentedly. A burglar might have been rather astonished had he heard such sentiments from my young lips.

In that strange "chancy" way in which remembrances of odd bizarre happenings jostle irrelevantly one against another, I recall another experience. Once I was going to a very juvenile party; I forget where, but I was ready and waiting for the nurse to finish dressing my sisters. Resplendent in a perfectly new suit of brown velvet, and full of expectation of pleasures to come, I was rather excited and consequently restless. My nurse told me not to fidget. Casual reprimands had no effect. Growing angry, she commanded me loudly and suddenly to sit down, which I did … but in the bath!… falling backwards with a splash and with my feet waving in the air. My arrival at the party eventually in my old suit did not in any way interfere with my enjoyment.

About this time my mother visited Paris, and we looked forward to the letters she wrote to us. One letter mentions the interesting but afterwards ill-fated Prince Imperial.

"I again saw," she wrote, "the little baby Emperor; he is lovely and wore a large hat with blue feathers, I should like to paint him."

In 1857 the Thames was frozen over, and at Eton an ox was roasted upon the ice. I remember it well. Another time on the occasion of one of our many visits to Brighton, we saw the great comet, and a new brother arrived:—all three very wonderful events to me.

The brilliance of the "star with a tail" aroused my sister and me to leave our beds and open the window to gaze curiously upon this phenomenon. Simultaneously a carriage drove up to the door, and my mother (who had just arrived from Slough) alighted, and after her the nurse with a baby in her arms. We were reprimanded severely for our temerity in being out of bed, but we could not return until we had had a glimpse of the new baby, who became one of the most beautiful children imaginable.

In Brighton we visited some relations of my father's, the Misses Smith, daughters of Horace Smith, one of the authors of "The Rejected Addresses." Of the two sisters, Miss Tysie was considered the most interesting, and although Miss Rosie was beautiful, her sister was considered the principal object of attraction by the innumerable people they knew. Everybody worth knowing in the world of art and especially of literature came to see the "Recamier" of Brighton; Thackeray was counted amongst her intimates, and we may possibly know her again in a character in one of his books. I remember being impressed with these ladies as they were very kind to us. Miss Tysie died only comparatively recently.

Two years later, I met a real hero, a general of six feet four inches, who seemed to me like a brilliant personage from the pages of a romantic drama.

General Sir John Hearsey, then just returned from India, where he had taken a conspicuous part in quelling the Mutiny, came to stay with us at Upton Park with his wife, dazzling my wondering eyes with curiosities and strange toys, embroideries, and queer things such as I had never seen or heard of before. Their two children were in charge of a dark-eyed ayah, whose native dress and beringed ears and nose created no little stir in sleepy Upton.

I could never have dreamt of a finer soldier than the General, and I shall never forget the awe I felt when he showed me the wounds all about his neck, caused by sabre-cuts, and so deep I could put my fingers in them. My father painted a splendid portrait of him in native uniform and another of the beautiful Lady Hearsey in a gorgeous Indian dress of red and silver.

Another friend of my childhood was the late Mr. Birch, the sculptor; he was assisting my father at that time by modelling some of the groups for his pictures, and he used to encourage me to try and model, both in wax and clay. Some thirty years later, we met at a public dinner, and I realised the then famous sculptor and A.R.A. was none other than the Mr. Birch of my childhood.

When I was quite a small boy, we left Upton Park and came to Kent Villa. The house (which became afterwards the residence of Orchardson, the painter), was built for my father, who went to live at Kensington Park chiefly through Dr. Doran, a great friend of his (of whom I have more to say later on).

There were two big studios, one above the other, for my parents. The house, which was covered with creepers, was large and roomy. It was approached by a carriage drive, the iron gates to which were a special feature. There was a garden at the back where we used frequently to dine in a tent until the long-legged spiders grew too numerous; but we often received our friends there when the weather was summery.

There was a ladies' school next door, and I recollect in later years my father's consternation when the girls, getting to know by some means or other (I think by the back stairs), of the Prince of Wales' intended visit, formed a guard of honour at our gate to receive him, which caused annoyance to my father and natural surprise to His Royal Highness.

My parents were very regular in their habits, for no matter how late the hour of retiring, they always began to work by nine. At four my father would take a glass of sherry and a sandwich before he went his usual long walk with my mother to the West End, and from there they wandered into the neighbourhood of Drury Lane, and lingered at the old curiosity shops. They were connoisseurs of old furniture and bought with discretion. As great believers in exercise, this walk was a regular pastime; on their return they dined about seven and often read to one another afterwards. My father's insatiable love of history and of the past led him to seek with undying interest any new light upon old events.

J. H. Edge, K.C., in his novel, "The Quicksands of Life," writes of my father: "The artist was then and probably will be for all time the head of his school. He was a big, burly, genial man, with a large mind, a larger heart, and a large brain. He was a splendid historian, with an unfailing memory, untiring energy and industry, and at the same time, like all true artists, men who appreciate shades of colour and shades of character—highly strung and morbidly sensitive, but not to true criticism which he never feared." Highly religious and intensely conscientious in every way and yet so very forgetful that his friends sometimes dubbed him the "Casual Ward." Brilliant conversational powers combined with a strong sense of humour, made him a delightful companion. His love of children was extraordinary. He never failed to visit our nursery twice a day, when we were tiny, and I have often seen him in later years, when bending was not easy, on his knees playing games with the youngest children. His voice was very penetrating, and they used to say at Windsor that one might hear him from the beginning of the Long Walk to the Statue. In church he frequently disturbed other worshippers by loudly repeating (to himself, as he thought) the service from beginning to end. I remember that on Sundays when the weather did not permit of our venturing to church, my father would read the service at home out of a very old Prayer-book, and when he came to the prayer for the safety of George IV., we children used to laugh before the time came, in expectation of his customary mistake. His powers of mimicry were extraordinary; I have seen him keeping a party of friends helpless with laughter over his imitations of old-fashioned ballet-dancers. His burlesque of Taglioni was side-splitting, especially as he grew stouter. Although a painter of historical subjects, he was extraordinarily fond of landscape, and among those of other places of interest there are some charming sketches of Rome, which he made while studying there in the company of his friend George Richmond, R.A. Among his drawings in the library at Windsor Castle, which were purchased after his death, are some remarkably interesting studies of many of the important people who sat to him for the pictures of Royal ceremonies. For the studies of the Peeresses' robes in "The Investiture of Napoleon III. with the Order of the Garter," my father was indebted to Lady Waterford (then Mistress of the Robes), whose detailed sketches were extraordinarily clever and very useful. This lady was a remarkable artist, her colour and execution being brilliant, so much so that when she was complaining of her lack of training in art, Watts told her no one who was an artist ever wished to see any of her work different from what it was … and he meant it. My father had an equally high opinion of her gift.