When I arrived in Cambridge on one of many occasions after a visit at
Oxford where I had gone with the object of producing C. M. Pitman for
_Vanity Fair_, I discovered the contemporary number of the _Granta_
had again been on my track and chaffed me more than ever; as I was on
excellent terms with the authors of that publication, I took their
friendly "digs" in the spirit they were intended. Here is a further
specimen of their humorous prose:
"Mr. Leslie Ward has turned up again to gather his usual crop of
caricatures for _Vanity Fair_. Mr. Pitman[6] is to suffer first, I
understand. Last year I think I informed you how Mr. Ward borrowed a
cap and gown in order to attend the lectures of Professor Robinson
Ellis[7] whom he was commissioned to draw; and I have no doubt he will
go through adventures just as surprising on his present visit.
"On arriving in Oxford last Monday, Mr. Ward remembered that some
years ago he had breakfasted in certain rooms in King Edward Street,
with a friend whose name he had forgotten. He therefore concluded
that these must be the lodgings of the President of the O.U.B.O.
Imagine his astonishment after he had driven there, when he was
informed that Mr. Pitman had never occupied the rooms. Eventually,
however, he ran his victim down at 155, High Street.
"Mr. Ward's next proceedings were characteristic of his amiable
nature. At the bottom of the stairs he dropped his gloves, at the top
of the stairs he dropped his stick, and in the room itself he dropped
his hat. Having recovered all his scattered property, he took off his
coat, and in doing so distributed over the floor a considerable
fortune in loose gold and silver and copper, which for greater
security he had placed in one of the outside pockets of his garment.
Great and resounding was the fall thereof, but Mr. Ward, on having his
attention called to the fact, merely observed with an easy
carelessness that marks the true artist, that he thought he had heard
something fall but wasn't sure.
"On being asked what other celebrities besides Mr. Pitman he proposed
to draw, he declared that he had all the names written down on a piece
of paper. Up to the present, however, though Mr. Ward had looked for
it in the most unlikely places, this piece of paper has defied every
effort to find it. Is it true, by the way, that once when on a visit
to Cambridge, Mr. Ward who was staying at 'The Hoop,' wandered into
the 'Blue Boar' and insisted, in spite of the landlady's despairing
efforts to persuade him to the contrary, that he had slept there on
the previous night and wanted to be shown his room, as the staircase
had somehow become unfamiliar to him?"
[Illustration: 1896. SAM LOATES.]
[Illustration: 1884. ARTHUR COVENTRY.]
[Illustration: FRANK WOOTTON. 1909.]
[Illustration: FORDHAM. 1882.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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