Among the Irish members I caricatured Mr. Mitchell Henry who led the
Home Rule Party in '79, but afterwards "ratted." He gave me three
sittings, but was afterwards heard to say that he did not know "where
the devil that fellow got hold of him!" I got to know him after
extremely well, and accepted his hospitality on more than one
occasion. He was very wealthy at one time, and up to the last
collected every relic of Dr. Johnson he could lay hands on. My father
had also taken a very great interest in anything connected with the
great man and had painted several events in his life, of which I
suppose the best known is "Dr. Johnson in the Anti-chamber of the Earl
of Chesterfield," now in the Tate Gallery. At his death I sold to him
a very interesting study from one of these pictures.
[Illustration: MR GLADSTONE. 1887.]
At the request of Mr. Bowles I went over to Dublin to make a special
picture of Parnell and Dillon in Kilmainham Gaol. I had letters of
introduction to both, and Parnell wrote to my hotel a very charming
letter of acquiescence in answer to my request for an interview, which
letter I greatly regret that I have had the misfortune to mislay. Then
I received a second letter in which he informed me that he had heard
that he would not be allowed to see me alone in prison, but that a
warder would have to be present the whole time, and under the
circumstance he was forced to decline my request. It was within the
bond of my contract with Mr. Bowles that I should not be required to
place the signature "Spy" on any drawing that was not the outcome of
personal observation of the subject required, so I gave it up, and the
Parnell-Dillon cartoon which appeared in _Vanity Fair_ was from the
clever imagination of Harry Furniss. I remember Parnell as a
carelessly dressed man with good features, a fine head with a high
forehead and eyes both striking and piercing, but not altogether
pleasant in expression. I was in the law-courts when the Piggott case
was on, and opposite to me was the celebrated Royal Academician,
Philip Calderon, who was studying him with the intention of making a
large picture of the court commissioned by the _Graphic_, but it was
never finished or produced as a sketch.
When the _Vanity Fair_ cartoons were put up for sale at Christie's the
only one of my series (curiously enough) that failed to find a bidder
was the drawing of Piggott, although it was one of my most successful
studies, from a sketch as he stood in the witness-box.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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